How much did you sell your movie for?

[JonathanLB]

Film is a collaborative medium, it's really not all about your personal vision but about taking a personal vision and having a bunch of collaborators, your team, to help you refine it and make it even stronger. I'm an author, if I want to do something solo and have it be just mine, I'll go write another book.

I would not shoot a feature with a crew smaller than about 18 to 20. That's as small as I can imagine going. I'll shoot a music video with 8 or 9, but even then I'd prefer to have more, it's just sometimes you get what you get.

And yes my entire feature shoot would be only 12 days, that's the plan anyway. I could shoot 90 pages that fast no problem, especially with a good-sized crew, zero company moves (same large house), and good organization. That just means let's say we spend 2 hours setting up per day, that's pretty generous because no "take down" will be required at day's end, just moving equipment to the next part of the house the next day or if there's time at the end of the day, do it then. That leaves 10 hours of shooting for about 8 pages, so if you can clip along at almost a page an hour you'll be fine. It's not leisurely but it's not horrible either, especially not with an adequate crew to keep things moving along smoothly.

I think I could do this feature for $150,000, but I don't think I could do it any cheaper and be satisfied. A feature to me is not a 90 minute film. To me that's very low standards for what the word "feature" means. It's like saying I'm a basketball player because I can dress in shorts and throw a basketball through a hoop. I mean, no, sorry, Kobe Bryan is a basketball player. I'm not. It's the same when people record their buddies in really lousy quality and the movie totally sucks, but it's 90 minutes long so they insist they just shot a feature. I just shrug -- "Ok, yeah you shot a feature, I guess." I mean if that's your standard for a feature, hey whatever, you go and do it. But my standard for a feature means it should be very high quality, there should be few if any technical errors. I have the same standards with a music video. I won't shoot something if I can't make it look great. It's ok if an indie feature isn't super complicated, it doesn't have a buttload of action, a bunch of locations, a bunch of talent onscreen, etc. All of that is totally understandable. But how hard is it to make something look at least professional? I can tell you it's not that hard. It does cost some money and takes someone who actually knows what they're doing, but besides that it's worth the effort and not super difficult.

I hate The Blair Witch Project, but at least they played to their strengths -- they knew they had insufficient funds or talent to make a professional looking project, so they set a story where that was not going to be a problem because it's within the story that it looks like crap, understandably. At least they were resourceful in that sense.

It's really all about what each of us will tolerate putting our names on and what we're willing to do, and our different approaches. Someone else with much lower standards will shoot a feature before me, and may wonder why I wait on the sidelines with cash and don't just jump in and "do it!" I wonder how they think you can shoot a feature on the HVX200. I mean... no disrespect to the camera but my standards for shooting a feature would at least be something like the newly announced 3K scarlett, at the very least, it has to be something you can output to 1080 with good dynamic range, anyway. But a lot of people really don't care that much, they just want to do something and do the best they can with the resources they have, and that's understandable too. But for me I'd rather work around that and try to build up more resources first so that when I bring my vision to the screen it really is quality and the best it can be, both technically and artistically.

Part of it, to me, is that I don't think you should be experimenting with feature films, just playing around. That's what shorts are for. That's what music videos are for. Who cares if you make a crappy short, we've all made them before. It's no big deal, and you waste a minimum of resources on it but can learn a lot. Making a bad feature just seems like putting SO MUCH work into a project and then turning out a turd. By the time I shoot my first feature I want to be a confident director, I want to know this will not be a problem because I've pushed and tested myself before and know what I'm doing. It will be challenging enough even then, but at least I will have the confidence of great work done in other mediums, shorter forms, to give me some confidence.

 

[Zak Forsman]

And yes my entire feature shoot would be only 12 days, that's the plan anyway.

why would you want to do that to yourself? i can't imagine not scheduling and budgeting for a minimum of four six-day weeks to shoot a feature. I produced one in '06 that was a 2 hour script and shot 3/4 of it all in one house and we spent 17 days there. i would almost prefer to minimize the crew and gear if it allotted us more time.

 

[jls4]

Film is a collaborative medium, it's really not all about your personal vision but about taking a personal vision and having a bunch of collaborators, your team, to help you refine it and make it even stronger. ...

I would not shoot a feature with a crew smaller than about 18 to 20. That's as small as I can imagine going. ...

And yes my entire feature shoot would be only 12 days, that's the plan anyway. I could shoot 90 pages that fast no problem, especially with a good-sized crew, zero company moves (same large house), and good organization. That just means let's say we spend 2 hours setting up per day, that's pretty generous because no "take down" will be required at day's end, just moving equipment to the next part of the house the next day or if there's time at the end of the day, do it then. ...

I think I could do this feature for $150,000, but I don't think I could do it any cheaper and be satisfied. A feature to me is not a 90 minute film. To me that's very low standards for what the word "feature" means. ... I just shrug -- "Ok, yeah you shot a feature, I guess." I mean if that's your standard for a feature, hey whatever, you go and do it. But my standard for a feature means it should be very high quality, there should be few if any technical errors. ... But how hard is it to make something look at least professional? I can tell you it's not that hard. It does cost some money and takes someone who actually knows what they're doing, but besides that it's worth the effort and not super difficult.

Jonathan, my brother/cousin from another life, we've had this debate several times, but you bring up some interesting points that I hope to bring into a deeper discussion.

Feature: you're correct on your definition. I would describe it in the same ways. But just because a crew is 3 to 5 doesn't mean the quality is bad. I've seen million dollar movies with bad lighting or bad camera work. It only takes one bad crew member to mess up your set, especially if the director is not smart enough to know what "good" looks like and hasn't walked through "tests" with his crew to figure out the full workflow and what the final product will look like.

As for $150K, you may need to change that amount to around $190K. I did a financial plan with named actors, etc paying cast and crew and my true amount was $225, but I was able to widdle it down to $190K.

I hate The Blair Witch Project, but at least they played to their strengths -- they knew they had insufficient funds or talent to make a professional looking project, so they set a story where that was not going to be a problem because it's within the story that it looks like crap, understandably. At least they were resourceful in that sense.

While features are about looking good, they did resolve the main point of movies which most never see. True financial gains. I think they personally sold for $3 mill from $40K or so. not bad. I'd love to have my name on that check! Remember art is subjective. I remember going into an art museum in Cincinnati and there was a tent in the middle of a room with a fur coat on the floor. They told me this was "art". It didn't matter how I felt (that it was stupid) it was art in someone's eyes. Many people liked the raw nature of Blair Witch it changed cinema and spawned many spin offs even down to "Cloverfield." So we have to look at it and recoginize it as art.

It's really all about what each of us will tolerate putting our names on and what we're willing to do, and our different approaches. Someone else with much lower standards will shoot a feature before me, and may wonder why I wait on the sidelines with cash and don't just jump in and "do it!" I wonder how they think you can shoot a feature on the HVX200. I mean... no disrespect to the camera but my standards for shooting a feature would at least be something like the newly announced 3K scarlett, at the very least, it has to be something you can output to 1080 with good dynamic range, anyway. But a lot of people really don't care that much, they just want to do something and do the best they can with the resources they have, and that's understandable too. But for me I'd rather work around that and try to build up more resources first so that when I bring my vision to the screen it really is quality and the best it can be, both technically and artistically.

Jonathan again your life is much different. Not to "call you out" but you've been a little more "blessed" than many of us. $150K for you is not even that big of a deal. To me it's my house. No one in my family or even that I know has even 1/6th of that money to invest in a feature. And people don't invest without seeing a return on investment. It's a vicious cycle. So don't knock others because in your mind they are limiting themselves, in a way they are working out problems, which is what the best directors do. If you can't figure out how to make a movie under rough conditions then you've got some soul searching about being a director. What can go wrong will go wrong. So you might as well get used to it.

You're so concerned about technical perfection, that you are forgetting that many of us do this because we love it. At least that's why I do it. It's like I can't breathe unless I'm on set.

Part of it, to me, is that I don't think you should be experimenting with feature films, just playing around. That's what shorts are for. That's what music videos are for. Who cares if you make a crappy short, we've all made them before. It's no big deal, and you waste a minimum of resources on it but can learn a lot. Making a bad feature just seems like putting SO MUCH work into a project and then turning out a turd. By the time I shoot my first feature I want to be a confident director, I want to know this will not be a problem because I've pushed and tested myself before and know what I'm doing. It will be challenging enough even then, but at least I will have the confidence of great work done in other mediums, shorter forms, to give me some confidence.

As for shorts to features. Just because you can direct/shoot a short does NOT mean you can handle a feature. Features deal with cross references, building characters over 90+ minutes vs maybe 15. There are more scenes, more to deal with, they are very complex. A writer that writes a short story can't nessasarily write a Novel. Someone who writes pop songs can't nessasarily write a symphony. A sprinter can't run the long distance. They are two different thought patterns. People need to stop thinking they are the same because they aren't. I've seen so many short directors come into the movie world and fail because they can't run and gun or they get bored with the lengthy process.

As for everything else, I just wait to hear you after you've done your first feature. It's a whole different animal and the only thing that can prepare you is to do one.

 

[JonathanLB]

why would you want to do that to yourself? i can't imagine not scheduling and budgeting for a minimum of four six-day weeks to shoot a feature. I produced one in '06 that was a 2 hour script and shot 3/4 of it all in one house and we spent 17 days there. i would almost prefer to minimize the crew and gear if it allotted us more time.

I was originally thinking three six-day weeks, 18 days of filming, but my DP who has done 4-5 professional features, quite a lot larger than what I am planning for the most part, said he did a low-budget drama that was quite successful in a 10-day shooting schedule. The fact is, I probably cannot do it if I can't do it in 12 days. It would cost too much money to shoot for 18 days. Before I knew anything about filmmaking I thought I could do the project for $50,000, lol. Then when I learned a lot more about how it works and how I work, I realized I could do it for $115,000 to $125,000 most likely, but that if I was going to spend that much I would want to just add another $25,000 or so for a B-lister and shoot the thing at about $150,000, not including marketing and all stuff after post-production, just to get the finished film ready for showing. Who knows, my plans may change more in the future, I'm about to shoot a short that's 6-7 pages long and the goal is two days, because it's three locations that are kind of far apart. That should actually be a pretty leisurely schedule. When I was shooting a really low budget 12-page short back in the day, not to say it was very good, we shot it in a day and a half and had like 5 locations. Of course the standards were low but so was the crew. We had quite a few instances where I needed a number of takes of each scene and it didn't seem that unrealistic to do it that fast. Now, I couldn't do that if I were doing it right, but 8 pages per day seems very possible with one location and an efficient crew.

Unless you're shooting Star Wars there's no reason you can't do at least 4 pages per day, though, I mean otherwise that's just downright slow unless you're talking about a ridiculous number of company moves, but anything reasonable where you have one location for one day, let's say, you should be getting through 4 pages minimum. Revenge of the Sith was two hours and they shot it in fewer than 60 days, that's a bit more than 2 pages per day and that was Star Wars! It's not that impossible to shoot 8 pages a day in the indie world.

Of course in a perfect world heck I'd love to have as much time as possible, and I think 18 days would be better. But there's two issues there. One, it's not my house, and I can easily convince the owner to be gone for two weeks in the winter, no problems, but if I ask for three weeks or four weeks, it's becoming something I don't think I would have permission to do. And without that, no free location means a similar location would cost me another several hundred thousand dollars. It's a completely unique location, nothing like it in this area of the country. It would cost a lot of money to get anything even close, at least in the $10,000+ per day range. Then besides the actual location and the money involved there, as I said it's a money-per-day issue and I can afford the production I want for 12 days, but not for 18. So to shoot for 18 even if I could get the house, I would have to scale back the crew to a point where I'd just shoot slower anyway, which means it's one or the other -- bigger crew for 12 days, same result, or smaller crew for 18 days. The only real difference then is the house access and the fact that if I can get a B-lister for a week, that's half of my filming schedule, they can literally be in the entire movie if we just shoot their scenes in that week, rather than a three week filming schedule where they're only there for 1/3 of the shoot and it's likely then you have to kill off the B-lister faster so he's not going to be in as much of the film.

 

[filmman]

The question in this thread is how much did you sell your movie for?

Every filmmaker worth his salt knows how to do script breakdown and budget accordingly.

How many days you shoot, how many crew members you use, how many pages per day, etc -- all these are variables: it depends on experience and expertise.

The most important aspect of selling a movie is "name actors" (who's in it?)

After you answer that question with, "so and so" then they'll talk to you.

I've been making my living with movies for 40 years. Movie money is an emotional subject. LOL How you spend it personal.

SAG or Non-SAG makes a big difference in budget. Also in marketing. It's like two types of filmmaking altogether different.

Even with Ultra Low Budget SAG, you have to spend a certain amount of money on a movie. It's not possible to do a no-budget movie with SAG talent. The exception is when SAG actors are producing their own movie and paying themselves. Even then the budgets are high. Read the Chalk movie thread.

Losing all your money isn't fun; that's what will happen to you if you make a fatal mistake in planning your production. But any time you're spending more than $5000 on a movie, consider the question "who's in it?"

 

[Prodigi Pictures]

a

 

[dougspice]

Jonathan, I was really with you up until you got to the bit about camera snobbery. Obviously your opinions are your opinions but I guarantee all this bullshit we waste all of our time arguing about on here is exactly that: bullshit. Any sane person watching a great story with great acting is gonna forget really fast what camera it's been shot on. And that should be the goal of any feature director. If the audience is spending more time being impressed by your shots than being engaged in your story, you've done exactly what you said you wouldn't: make a lengthy music video.

All this talk about scheduling is pretty bizarre, too. Lots of people saying "you can't do a feature in 10 days!" or "it's a waste of time to spend 30 days on it!" It depends entirely on the script and how you want to shoot it. Give me a month with any script ever written and I'll rewrite it to be shot in two weeks. Filmmaking is all about compromises, and no two sets are ever going to be the same. We shot 88 pages with effects and many location changes in 15 days for $30,000 with a crew of about 12, and it looks terrific. But does that mean that you or anyone else should do it? Not necessarily. I probably wouldn't do it myself again, either. But that's how much time and money we had, and we got it done and still ended up with something we're all reasonably proud of. Your mileage will vary.

However I can say this: think carefully about taking a "minimum crew of 18 to 20" into a single indoor location. We shot The Echo Game largely in my house, which has a reasonably large open plan living and dining room, and it was a struggle with our crew of usually around 12-15 not to have everyone tripping over each other all the time. It was hard to move around and the best place for you to be was usually outside, as far away as possible. As you increase the size of the crew, all of your costs go up, and there's a very simple expression that covers this: mo' money mo' problems... not the least of which is that the price you ultimately must sell the movie for also goes up.

 

[Prodigi Pictures]

a

 

[dougspice]

But while we're at it, I can't disagree more with Prodigi's practice on crew/time. An experienced crew is time. The more good people you have working for you, the less bad takes you'll have, the faster you will work, the less you'll have to constantly be watching your own back, the less stress everyone will feel. The choice is a no-brainer, between slightly shortening a schedule in order to have better quality people work on it. Everyone will be happier, your quality will improve, and you'll expose yourself to less risk.

Here's the people that should be the best you can get (on-set, below the line, and roughly in order):
AD
Sound
DP
AC
Key grip/gaffer
(depending on the show) art department

 

[Zak Forsman]

But while we're at it, I can't disagree more with Prodigi's practice on crew/time. An experienced crew is time. The more good people you have working for you, the less bad takes you'll have, the faster you will work, the less you'll have to constantly be watching your own back, the less stress everyone will feel. The choice is a no-brainer, between slightly shortening a schedule in order to have better quality people work on it. Everyone will be happier, your quality will improve, and you'll expose yourself to less risk.

Here's the people that should be the best you can get (on-set, below the line, and roughly in order):
AD
Sound
DP
AC
Key grip/gaffer
(depending on the show) art department

and respectfully, doug. i couldn't disagree with you more. you can do both. Heart of Now cost $50K with a crew of 12, a cast of 12 (all SAG but 2), 30+ locations, 27 shooting days.

a quality crew is not necessarily an experienced crew. we had three months of preproduction to interview and hire ambitious young filmmakers eager to collaborate on a film they truly believed in. Everyone we hired was a fan of the sort of film we were about to make. we didn't even schedule interviews with people who hadn't first visited our web site or answered the 10 questions we posted in our craigslist crew call. we screened out anyone who was slow to respond, disengaged, egotistical, liked bad movies (seriously) and we didn't hire any smokers. we took the time to train them properly, hired a first AD that inspired and motivated me and the crew with a familial sense that "we were all in this together", rather than acting like a bulldog. this was our AD's first set to run and we hired him based on personality, and trained him on everything from scheduling and call sheets to making our days and making sure the actors were always taken care of. he was amazing and i've received more compliments about him than anyone else. I still get emails from agents and managers of our cast saying this was the best set their client had ever worked on and "do you have anything else for them in the near future?" the first thing we did once the entire crew was in place was a "crew read-through" of the script. we bought everyone lunch and casted our AD and gaffer and camera ops in various roles to make sure everyone really absorbed the story. the effect on set was that everyone always understood the context of the scene we were shooting, elevating their attention to what we were doing as well as their ability to contribute an idea here and there.

I've been on some of the most notable sets Hollywood has put together recently by virtue of what i do for a living, and yes my crew was green, but easily more efficient and more engaged in the film they were making and I would take every single one of them onto the next project. it's because of them that we stayed on schedule no matter how much time I spent with the actors refining their performance. it's because of their planning that the Malibu fires in late 2007 didn't derail our production. they had a back-up for every location in place and this crew could turn on a dime.

I've met a lot of people who insist their minimum is the absolute minimum you can make a compelling feature-length motion picture for. there are as many people saying $100K as there are saying $5M. and if they've been successful, then they are all right. in my own endeavors, time and "hunger" has proven itself to be of greater value than money or experience. and i acknowledge that all of this would fall flat on its face if the quality of the storytelling and performances did not continue to inspire my crew every day. the results can kill motivation faster than anything. a lot of filmmakers look forward to the day when the so-called professionalism of filmmaking is replaced by artists and craftsmen who are truly hungry to do great work. for me, that day arrived two years ago. my 2¢.

 

[jls4]

I think everyone is RIGHT and everyone is WRONG. Truth is different strokes for different folks. I'm sure John and Jane Q. Public will make their decision in the long run. And like I said before, there is more than one way to do it.

 

[Zak Forsman]

...yeah, i also want to add that i'm aware i'm the exception to the rule.

 

[dougspice]

Actually, you don't disagree with me at all, Zak... or at least somehow I agree with you, creating a serious agree/disagree paradox!

I never said you couldn't work with experienced crew AND shoot a longer schedule. I just said that if I had to choose (and you always have to make this choice one way or another) I would choose doing a shorter schedule with a skilled crew than a longer one with a green crew every time. Your anecdote about your AD is nice to hear, but someone still had to have the knowledge to train him, and the time to do it. I know YOU have significant real experience in this business and know how to get things done, but most people don't.

To me your approach embodies perfectly a koan I try to tell people all the time: "enter by form, then exit from form" which in other words means you must learn the tried and true way of doing things before you can decide which parts of it to disavow from your own work.

Here's a story our AD told us on our last shoot. She's a DGA 1st with decades of experience, and she ran our show like clockwork, truly a pleasure to work with. She was telling us a story of how she went to "film school" a long long time ago at a small college in the northeast. There was really no faculty there with any real experience in the practical aspects of filmmaking, but she figured out how to get her films done. Years later she moved to Hollywood and learned how it was done in the "real world" and discovered that simply out of necessity she had basically invented all of the standard practices all by herself. One-lines, call sheets, crew lists. It took her much longer to figure out formats that worked but basically she evolved these practices out of the necessity of the craft. I think a lot of people do this. I know I did it, to a lesser extent. But it is vastly, vastly faster when you are not starting from square one... when you have been shown the way forward by someone who has been there before you, before you even start.

By the way, I definitely didn't mean to suggest that the positions I listed are the ONLY ones that you should seek skill and experience in. There's a huge difference in speed and ability even between an experienced and green P.A.

 

[JonathanLB]

But while we're at it, I can't disagree more with Prodigi's practice on crew/time. An experienced crew is time. The more good people you have working for you, the less bad takes you'll have, the faster you will work, the less you'll have to constantly be watching your own back, the less stress everyone will feel. The choice is a no-brainer, between slightly shortening a schedule in order to have better quality people work on it. Everyone will be happier, your quality will improve, and you'll expose yourself to less risk.

Here's the people that should be the best you can get (on-set, below the line, and roughly in order):
AD
Sound
DP
AC
Key grip/gaffer
(depending on the show) art department

Wow... I had a long post mostly written and a power outage, that's so uncool.

What I was writing is that I think this has been a great discussion and it's so nice hearing from all of the people who have done features, in different ways, and I wanted to thank everyone for their great contributions and useful information, differing opinions, etc. It is really informative and I appreciate the discussion.

I think the key here -- and what is always impressive about indie filmmakers, to me -- is that everyone does things the best way they can, but these ways are all very different. The go-getters, which are you guys, don't just say, "Oh I can't do this because X, Y, and Z," you look at what you have and you figure out the best way to make it happen. It may not be ideal, you probably want more money and more time ("A day late, a dollar shot"), but you do it anyway and do your best under the constraints you have.

I didn't want anyone to get the impression that somehow $150K is not a ton of money to me. For almost anyone, that is a load of cash, but for a feature film it's still very constrained. It's not much money by any means for what we do in this industry. Of course if I lost that much money it would be very bad. It is a constraint having to shoot with that little cash even if other people would be happy to have that money, because the fact is the feature idea I most want to do couldn't be done for short of probably $5 million, and I don't see how it would be done well that way, it's probably like a $50 million idea. But I don't have the money to do that, haha, so I have to shoot what I can just like everyone else here, doing the best with our resources.

Of course I think we all want to make our money back if we spent a significant sum, whatever that is to us, on a feature film. But at the same time, I don't want to never take this risk just because the odds are against me making my money back. As an analogy, when I finished college I decided to take a year and a half off (which became two because my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and subsequently died of it) to pursue martial arts, because I had always wanted to be a martial artist and didn't want to end up being 65, looking back and regretting never having done that, always wondering if I would have been any good, etc. So I trained hard, got two black belts, and it was a great experience, a realization of a life dream for me, and well worth putting my career on hold for two years to accomplish (although in that time I also published and promoted one book, then wrote a second book as well, which was later published, and I wrote another published essay, so I was still doing mentally engaging activities as well). I would honestly rather blow $150,000, with no return at all on investment, if it meant having a feature film I was proud of showing to anyone, that was legitimately a very good effort, than to end up being 65, never having done a feature, wondering if I ever would have been able to make a good one. I can live with losing $150,000, it would suck pretty hardcore especially in this current economy, but I would regret that MUCH less than never doing a feature, for instance, because I was always too scared whether it'd be a good investment (it never is, really, unless you're a major studio and know you can back a proven franchise / book / whatever with A-list talent and distribute to every theater, etc., then you feel you have more than a 50% chance of success).

As for the discussion of time, money, shooting days, pages per day, etc., that depends a lot on your style. An experienced, solid crew should be able to setup a lot more quickly, allowing you to do more takes per hour than if you have a tiny, inexperienced crew, so shooting for 12 days could be the same as shooting for 18, for instance. But it's all really a moot point, that's what I was trying to say, because like any of you shooting a feature I have limitations. I have $150,000 I could spend on a feature, and I have another $75,000 I could spend on the proper equipment I would want to buy first, namely RED products, some lenses, etc. But that's it, maximum, and I absolutely refuse to rent that type of equipment. I rent to other people on a fairly consistent basis, I don't like paying to rent equipment, that's another discussion entirely, but I only rent what I can't afford so putting that money into the budget is not worthwhile to me, buying equipment gives me assets I can use to supplement my income and shoot other commercial / music video / corporate projects. So moving beyond that, I cannot secure this house for more than two weeks. It's just not possible. That's my limitation. So either I can not shoot the movie at all, or I can shoot it in two weeks. Or option 3 would be shoot it elsewhere, and since that would cost an extra several hundred thousand dollars that I don't have, that's not an option either. And since my DP and my UPM both say it wouldn't be a problem to shoot in 12 days and have it turn out well, and I also believe I could do it, then that's really the best course of action. If there was some compelling reason why it would be impossible for me to shoot this in 12 days no matter what and have it look decent, well, then I'd have to take it off the table after all.

I will be honest I AM a bit of a camera snob, I won't apologize for that either, though. I'm sorry but 95% of audiences DO care about the quality of the film. My friends are in med school, law school, film school, already out with MFAs, one is already in law, etc., these people still can't be convinced to watch a black and white movie most of the time, and don't want to watch movies with subtitles. I've heard tons of really intelligent, otherwise seemingly open-minded people poo-poo movies for silly reasons constantly, and even I won't watch a film that looks like an amateur production, I don't care how great the story and characters are. Plus, in general it's VERY fair to assume that if you couldn't bother putting some work into your production design and the quality of the shoot technically, you probably couldn't be bothered actually putting that time into story and acting, either. Sure, there are 5% of projects that would prove me wrong, but let's just face the facts most indie films are terrible garbage. There's a reason they don't make it anywhere -- they suck! I'm not trying to be mean but it's just how it goes with underfunded projects a lot of the times, with inexperienced crew. There are gems out there, but there is a lot of garbage too. Heck even Hollywood turns out garbage, but at least it's good looking garbage

I don't want to get into a camera debate or anything here, though, it's a great discussion thread and I think that's taking things to already-well-tread territory for me. Suffice to say that it is my personal preference that I would shoot a feature with a camera capable of ultimate 1080p delivery, nothing less than that. I wish I could shoot my current projects that way but the fact is my clients and the level I'm at now don't care about better than 720p, the HVX looks great for Web videos, it even looks great on TV if you shoot properly, so it's a waste of money for me right now to be chasing after better cameras, when I could spend that money on, say, marketing and promotion for my company, or building more for my reel, etc. The HVX is a great camera for my needs currently. When my needs grow, I will want to have a better camera, for now I'm happy.

I don't know the way other filmmakers work so it's a little silly for me to comment that 4 pages a day should be no problem for anyone, but I can guarantee for me that would not be something that would generally be difficult with 12 hours in a day. Unless it is a bunch of location moves, of course, or action or something along these lines. But I mean, my music video that has been most successful, we shot day and night performance, 10 takes each with two cameras rolling, and we filmed a story with a bunch of different scenes in this studio, and in one day we got a 3 minute music video done with incredible complexity. If I had been filming an actual narrative story in this place it would have been so easy to do 6 to 8 pages, no problem. Of course it depends on so many factors, content of scenes, what is involved, all I'm saying is that as an average I believe it's definitely doable. Easy? Not at all... but even in my ideal world I would not be comfortable shooting less than 4 pages a day on average, that's just boring. Until I'm shooting Star Wars. But on any film with mostly dialogue, that's slow in my opinion, and I'm a perfectionist too but I don't want 15 takes of everything, I just want enough to know I nailed it, that it's really as good as it can be.

 

[jls4]

Good Post Jonathan.

I have $150,000 I could spend on a feature, and I have another $75,000 I could spend on the proper equipment I would want to buy first, namely RED products, some lenses, etc. But that's it, maximum, and I absolutely refuse to rent that type of equipment.

Had to point this out. It truly shows the difference in the way people "think" about even the smallest of things. To me what you said above is a $225,000 budget, because I would have rolled any costs (including equipment purchases) into the movie I'm currently making. So I'm not saying anything to the left or right, but I was in another discussion and it turned ugly real quick and I think it's because of perceptions like this. One person sees two budgets and they don't mix, which there is nothing wrong with, another person sees one budget mixed, which there is nothing wrong with.

Sometimes I wonder if the few spats that show up do so because on the board people can't "see" what people are saying. We must remember we are talking to people from different regions of the world, and differences in culture do effect thought patterns.

But good post.:beer:

 

[filmman]

Yeah, but JL, the worst mistake young filmmakers make is that they don't factor in their time and skill into the budget for the movie they're producing and directing -- in my case, my entire work and creativity as a filmmaker goes into the budget. So when I say I make a movie for nothing, I'm just joking. All my movies are over $100,000,000. LOL

 

[jls4]

Yeah, but JL, the worst mistake young filmmakers make is that they don't factor in their time and skill into the budget for the movie they're producing and directing -- in my case, my entire work and creativity as a filmmaker goes into the budget. So when I say I make a movie for nothing, I'm just joking. All my movies are over $100,000,000. LOL

I understand that point! I think mine would still be worth a little over a million, but hey who's counting. rogar-BigGrin(DBG)

I think the largest paradox is what a movie is really worth. It's extremely interesting to me what budgets mean to different people at different times.

Example A: Filmmaker Makes $50,000 movie, but knows 2 A-list actors who cut their rates to SAG levels. Knows several Crew members, etc and owns over $150K worth of equipment.

Example B: Filmmaker Makes $50,000 movie, knows 2 B-list actors who cut their rates to SAG-Indie. Knows a few crew members and owns $60K worth of equipment.

Example C: Filmmaker jMakes $50,000 movie but is just starting out, has some knowledge but doesn't own or have access to any actors or equipment.

What each of those filmmakers is able to create has to do with a lot more than direct money for the project.

If you owned say $50K worth of equipment. You could say on the "books" the movie cost $75,000 even though directly it cost $50K because you're renting equipment from yourself. :beer:

 

[filmman]

This is a sobering perspective, JL. Thanks for breaking it down so graphically.

The most important element emerging out of this analysis is star power.

1) If you're a star director, it doesn't matter what camera you use or what your budget is. When they ask you "who's in it?", your answer should be, "I directed it!" LOL Then ask them defiantly, "who were the actors in American Graffiti before Lucas used them?", who were the actors in "ET the Extraterrestrial" before Spielberg used them?, etc.

2) If you know a name actor (and if you don't, find one), get him interested in your project and sing him up before you go to distributors -- which is what Adam did in Corrado ... to some extent. He had some real backing before he approached the agents, but what he found out was that he needed A-List talent to smash the distribution doors down and get the "big advance".

3) Make a great picture regardless of talent -- just a great movie, based on subject matter. Distributors go to Cannes and pay $5 million to buy a movie and sometimes it's even a foreign film with talent that we never heard of.

STAR POWER!

 

[David W. Richardson]

Actually, an inexperienced (or unskilled) crew can mean SHORTER times. Because they don't know what they're doing. They slap the lights up just anywhere. They stick the camera wherever suits them. They shoot and go.

My first shorts were done with crews like this, and we accomplished a LOT in a little time. But then on my first feature I had a DP and gaffer who not only was experienced and skilled, he was also an artist -- which is what you want. It was only then that I learned that art and craft take TIME. Green as I was, I got frustrated because it took him SO long to get everything setup for a scene. Then I saw the results of his hard work -- beautiful images, FAR superior to the ones I had gotten in my shorts (and had thought were perfectly fine.)

My inexperienced crews were fast -- but my experienced crew was GOOD. I'll take GOOD over FAST any day.

 

[JonathanLB]

Yeah, but JL, the worst mistake young filmmakers make is that they don't factor in their time and skill into the budget for the movie they're producing and directing -- in my case, my entire work and creativity as a filmmaker goes into the budget. So when I say I make a movie for nothing, I'm just joking. All my movies are over $100,000,000. LOL

Oh, that's a good point, if I added in my talent and creativity and time into my budget, I'm sure that'd increase it by, oh, about a hundred bucks. haha, j/k

In truth, it's not entirely fair to say $150,000 budget and none of the equipment purchases count, but it's also not fair to say that it's $225,000 if you buy $75,000 in equipment, because you could probably resell that equipment immediately after the shoot for definitely no worse than $65,000, so you'd at most have spent $10,000 on the equipment. Or you can figure in a "reasonable rental rate" for what you would have paid a rental house. When I say $150,000 I'm talking above and beyond what I own or am getting for free. As I own about $75,000 in equipment already, and have access to the location (house) for free, that honestly makes it not far off a $500,000 budget not including any of my time, talent, etc. So that's why, to me, when I think of spending $150,000, while I'd be nervous about it, I would feel good that I believe I could make a movie that LOOKS like a $1 million low budget horror film, rather than a much lower budget film in actuality. If I paid myself as a screenwriter, even whatever is the minimum union pay for a screenplay, and paid myself as a director and producer, and then paid for the location, and rented my own equipment to the shoot at let's say probably $1,500 per day or so, it would add a bit more cash. But my "out of pocket" expenses are really was concern me.

I know it's a totally different debate, but for people in the industry who are doing even semi-regular work, I believe in owning equipment *if you can swing it*. Of course, most / many people cannot. But for me, for instance, I spent $9,400 total on two HVX200s (bought one new, one "used" from my business partner, since we jointly owned equipment, it had been used just once, haha). I have made I think about $1,200 renting them out this year, not much, but I'm not really in the rental business primarily either. I have logged a total of 23 filming days on the cameras this year (1 filming day = 1 camera, 1 day, so 2 cameras for 1 day would be 2 filming days), meaning roughly I've used them each once per month, that's quite low actually. I will be getting in another 3 filming days this year (1 day, 2 cameras, another day, 1 camera). That is 26 days filming. If I were to rent each time I needed a camera, that would be about 26 x $150, which is $3,900. So combine the savings with the income, that's $5,100 on my $9,400 investment in just one year. There is no chance that the cameras have depreciated $5,100 this year. And what's funny is I would classify myself as an infrequent shooter this year. I mean, 26 total camera days in a year is really low. I hope next year it's at least twice that. I have projects planned already for January and February that will add up to probably 8 to 10 filming days. So for me, it just makes no sense to rent. Not even to factor in convenience -- my cameras are available whenever I want to use them, at my beck and call, and they do not have to be returned, there is no driving around, etc.