bruceallen
Well-known member
EDIT: Well, awesome. DVXuser decided to rename the "Business" forum (where I posted this) to Distribution / Marketing. So my post now makes zero sense 
Hopefully when one day a Business forum gets made again, someone can move my post so that the 3 guys bothering to read this feel soothed by it being in the right spot!
END EDIT
I thought I'd start a diary about making a short film. I'm just going to put my experience out there and you guys can watch vicariously as the trainwreck unfolds.
I'll attempt to be as honest as possible since... well, that's way more fun. I really enjoy reading about other peoples' experiences when they're honest and real. Also, I'm kinda outspoken about everything from financing to art to tech. So it's only fair that I try to detail my own process. You guys can judge for yourselves whether I'm doing as I say.
I'll start in the Business section because that's the stage I'm at: starting to figure out how to fund the damn thing. Hopefully one day I'll be able to start a post in the Directing section too once we get closer to actually shooting
All comments / criticism / questions very welcome.
There's only one place I have to be purposefully vague: my day job is doing trailers - and I really can't talk about current projects. That would cause me to lose my job - and then I definitely wouldn't have the money to make my short!
Anyway, without further ado... let's catch up. I'm going to start 10 years ago and fast forward semi-quickly.
2001: THEATRE / FILM SCHOOL IN SOUTH AFRICA (AKA THE LAST TIME I MADE A SHORT FILM I ACTUALLY LIKED)
Back in 2001 I wrote a script I liked. I also made a short film. It went well. Notably, it got me laid at NYU's student film festival.
2002-2003: FILM SCHOOL AT USC
That was not as much fun. Met some great people and had the occasional good class but overall was paying through the nose for some rather silly stuff. Necessary in order to get the student visa I needed so that I could get a job in LA though...
2004-2011: A LACK OF RESOURCES - NO TIME, NO MONEY, NO EQUIPMENT, SCRAMBLING TO STAY IN THE COUNTRY LEGALLY
I had some nice ideas for short films. And feature films. No time though, and no money. Trust me, the ideas were good. But I was working insane hours (I clocked 508 hours of overtime in 2011!)... paying off debts, immigration lawyer fees, etc. Just not possible to do anything about those ideas. And quitting my job seemed like a really stupid idea:
1. I'd lose my work visa and get kicked out of the country
2. People at at my job are nice and they pay me good money.
3. I didn't have an awesome script ready to shoot.
4. I didn't have any money to shoot it with. And no money to support myself if I want to try to do anything with the film once it's shot.
5. I didn't have the equipment needed to do the post to my satisfaction.
Of course... working insane hours meant that I wouldn't likely ever get to write aforementioned awesome script. But #3 was not what was holding me back. It was #4 and #5.
Meanwhile, my friend Ruairi is making this awesome short film called Blinky. And then he made another awesome one called Imaginary Forces. And believe it or not, Blinky actually seems to be translating into success for him.
Still, watching him - how talented he is and how long and hard he's working at this - I begin to understand that to break into the big leagues is really, really difficult.
Maybe you don't want to disadvantage yourself with a total lack of financial resources to start with. There's a really good chance you'll be working your ass off for a year AFTER YOUR AWESOME SHORT IS ALREADY MADE just trying to get your film projects together, not earning money, doing insane hours... and it would be a good idea to have enough cash saved up or sell-able things left over so that you don't have to stress about rent at the same time.
Also, when you read through biographies of successful indie filmmakers... often there are little bits like "And then he went to his friend's cabin for a month to write peacefully"... If I went off to my friend's cabin for a month to write peacefully, I'd come back to find myself unable to pay rent on my apartment.
Maybe this doesn't apply to you. Maybe you have a support network in this country, or enough wealth. In that case, great. Me, I came from South Africa and my parents were middle class (dad owned a pharmacy, my mom did computer programming and bookkeeping). This translated to a good middle class income in South Africa of... about $30,000 per year.
My parents are wonderful, generous sweet people - they paid for my education (I got most of my South African education for free through scholarships... and then my parents took the money that would have cost plus a little extra and gave it to me to spend on my USC MFA... the money lasted for about all of a year and a half!), helped me get to America, etc. But they can't support me in the USA while I pursue my film dreams. If I want to make a film here... I kinda have to do it myself.
OCTOBER 2011-JANUARY 2012: STARTING THE FILM FUND, INDIE STYLE
Like most truly indie projects, the "funding" began with a credit card offer.
In Nov, I got a nice letter from my bank telling me that if I made some kind of bank transfer, I'd get 0% APR on my credit card for most of 2012. This must be some kind of attempt to entice me to transfer vast amounts of money, forget about it for 5 years, and then owe them $100,000 in interest. Or something. Anyway, I transferred a miniscule amount... then just put all of my purchases for a few months on the card at 0% APR.
Anyway, come January, my bank account was looking about $3000 healthier than usual... and my credit card had about $3000 on it not being charged interest. Since I didn't need to immediately spend that $3000 on things like rent, beer and ammunition... I decided this would be my film fund. I can pay back the credit card before my 0% APR deal runs out... I hope.
So what did I do? Make a film? Nope - I decided to invest it in shares. So I went looking for companies that I thought were really really undervalued.
You guys are going to laugh at the next part: at the same time I was listening to podcasts on fxguide.com about filmmaking, VFX, etc. On one of them, they were talking about Avid being a good deal for someone like Blackmagic to buy.
We use a lot of Avid gear at work... and FCP X looked like it just imploded... and heck, I even bought Media Composer 6 myself last year. So, why not? Besides, the irony of financing my film based on Apple's missteps just seemed too delicious...
Q: "What do you think of FCP X?"
A: "I love it. It pushed up Avid's stock and that gave me the money I needed to make the short film that launched my directing career!"
Only problem was... it took a week to transfer the money over to my brokerage company - and during that time the damn Avid shares were already going up! GNASH TEETH! However, right after that, my friend paid me back unexpectedly $1000 he owed me. Nice! So now I had $4000...
Let's go
TO BE CONTINUED
Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
Hopefully when one day a Business forum gets made again, someone can move my post so that the 3 guys bothering to read this feel soothed by it being in the right spot!
END EDIT
I thought I'd start a diary about making a short film. I'm just going to put my experience out there and you guys can watch vicariously as the trainwreck unfolds.
I'll attempt to be as honest as possible since... well, that's way more fun. I really enjoy reading about other peoples' experiences when they're honest and real. Also, I'm kinda outspoken about everything from financing to art to tech. So it's only fair that I try to detail my own process. You guys can judge for yourselves whether I'm doing as I say.
I'll start in the Business section because that's the stage I'm at: starting to figure out how to fund the damn thing. Hopefully one day I'll be able to start a post in the Directing section too once we get closer to actually shooting
All comments / criticism / questions very welcome.
There's only one place I have to be purposefully vague: my day job is doing trailers - and I really can't talk about current projects. That would cause me to lose my job - and then I definitely wouldn't have the money to make my short!
Anyway, without further ado... let's catch up. I'm going to start 10 years ago and fast forward semi-quickly.
2001: THEATRE / FILM SCHOOL IN SOUTH AFRICA (AKA THE LAST TIME I MADE A SHORT FILM I ACTUALLY LIKED)
Back in 2001 I wrote a script I liked. I also made a short film. It went well. Notably, it got me laid at NYU's student film festival.
2002-2003: FILM SCHOOL AT USC
That was not as much fun. Met some great people and had the occasional good class but overall was paying through the nose for some rather silly stuff. Necessary in order to get the student visa I needed so that I could get a job in LA though...
2004-2011: A LACK OF RESOURCES - NO TIME, NO MONEY, NO EQUIPMENT, SCRAMBLING TO STAY IN THE COUNTRY LEGALLY
I had some nice ideas for short films. And feature films. No time though, and no money. Trust me, the ideas were good. But I was working insane hours (I clocked 508 hours of overtime in 2011!)... paying off debts, immigration lawyer fees, etc. Just not possible to do anything about those ideas. And quitting my job seemed like a really stupid idea:
1. I'd lose my work visa and get kicked out of the country
2. People at at my job are nice and they pay me good money.
3. I didn't have an awesome script ready to shoot.
4. I didn't have any money to shoot it with. And no money to support myself if I want to try to do anything with the film once it's shot.
5. I didn't have the equipment needed to do the post to my satisfaction.
Of course... working insane hours meant that I wouldn't likely ever get to write aforementioned awesome script. But #3 was not what was holding me back. It was #4 and #5.
Meanwhile, my friend Ruairi is making this awesome short film called Blinky. And then he made another awesome one called Imaginary Forces. And believe it or not, Blinky actually seems to be translating into success for him.
Still, watching him - how talented he is and how long and hard he's working at this - I begin to understand that to break into the big leagues is really, really difficult.
Maybe you don't want to disadvantage yourself with a total lack of financial resources to start with. There's a really good chance you'll be working your ass off for a year AFTER YOUR AWESOME SHORT IS ALREADY MADE just trying to get your film projects together, not earning money, doing insane hours... and it would be a good idea to have enough cash saved up or sell-able things left over so that you don't have to stress about rent at the same time.
Also, when you read through biographies of successful indie filmmakers... often there are little bits like "And then he went to his friend's cabin for a month to write peacefully"... If I went off to my friend's cabin for a month to write peacefully, I'd come back to find myself unable to pay rent on my apartment.
Maybe this doesn't apply to you. Maybe you have a support network in this country, or enough wealth. In that case, great. Me, I came from South Africa and my parents were middle class (dad owned a pharmacy, my mom did computer programming and bookkeeping). This translated to a good middle class income in South Africa of... about $30,000 per year.
My parents are wonderful, generous sweet people - they paid for my education (I got most of my South African education for free through scholarships... and then my parents took the money that would have cost plus a little extra and gave it to me to spend on my USC MFA... the money lasted for about all of a year and a half!), helped me get to America, etc. But they can't support me in the USA while I pursue my film dreams. If I want to make a film here... I kinda have to do it myself.
OCTOBER 2011-JANUARY 2012: STARTING THE FILM FUND, INDIE STYLE
Like most truly indie projects, the "funding" began with a credit card offer.
In Nov, I got a nice letter from my bank telling me that if I made some kind of bank transfer, I'd get 0% APR on my credit card for most of 2012. This must be some kind of attempt to entice me to transfer vast amounts of money, forget about it for 5 years, and then owe them $100,000 in interest. Or something. Anyway, I transferred a miniscule amount... then just put all of my purchases for a few months on the card at 0% APR.
Anyway, come January, my bank account was looking about $3000 healthier than usual... and my credit card had about $3000 on it not being charged interest. Since I didn't need to immediately spend that $3000 on things like rent, beer and ammunition... I decided this would be my film fund. I can pay back the credit card before my 0% APR deal runs out... I hope.
So what did I do? Make a film? Nope - I decided to invest it in shares. So I went looking for companies that I thought were really really undervalued.
You guys are going to laugh at the next part: at the same time I was listening to podcasts on fxguide.com about filmmaking, VFX, etc. On one of them, they were talking about Avid being a good deal for someone like Blackmagic to buy.
We use a lot of Avid gear at work... and FCP X looked like it just imploded... and heck, I even bought Media Composer 6 myself last year. So, why not? Besides, the irony of financing my film based on Apple's missteps just seemed too delicious...
Q: "What do you think of FCP X?"
A: "I love it. It pushed up Avid's stock and that gave me the money I needed to make the short film that launched my directing career!"
Only problem was... it took a week to transfer the money over to my brokerage company - and during that time the damn Avid shares were already going up! GNASH TEETH! However, right after that, my friend paid me back unexpectedly $1000 he owed me. Nice! So now I had $4000...
Let's go
TO BE CONTINUED
Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com
Last edited:
. How's it coming along for you, Bruce?
