Filmmaking anymore?

roxics

roxics

Veteran
The DVX100 was cool because it was the first DV camera to have 24p recording and a price tag around $3500. Which meant it was in the range of a lot of shoestring budget filmmakers. But this forum seems like it's gone all corporate/commercial in the years since that camera went out of style. Is there anyone here still making micro budget indie films? Shooting on weekends and free nights where everyone is working on copy/credit. Shooting an entire feature film on a few thousand dollars, that kind of thing.

I like this forum and I like all of you fine folks, but I miss those conversations. Yeah I do the corporate commercial thing to pay the bills, but that's not what I wanted to do with my life. That's just a bi-product of my skill set when I need to apply it to something to make a living. I really wanted to make films. You know, fictional pieces of art where we get to play with cool stuff like squibs and explosions and monster makeup like i used to do in my teens and early twenties.

Is anyone here still doing that?
 
Absolutely there are, one of them just bought a GH4 to replace his GH2 because the GH2 stopped working. But they seem to be a minority here, which is too bad because there is plenty of experience to help guide a person along.
 
I have every intention of making such a movie. The only problem is I don't have money to hire professionals and I don't have friends willing to work for free.
 
ugafan said:
I have every intention of making such a movie. The only problem is I don't have money to hire professionals and I don't have friends willing to work for free.
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I hear you. Many are in the same situation. Attempted partial solutions: (1) have your script reflect that reality - by far the most important factor: minimize costs of production every way you can - limit locations, free locations, same for props, costumes etc., limit necessary crew and actors, long and thorough pre-production - you must get super creative so that your script is still engaging. And - this may not be practical for everyone - if you don't have many willing/able friends, maybe you have a willing/able spouse? Remember, it is possible to work with super minimalistic crew - Herzog is famous for that, often only working with the camera operator, he even prefers the flexibility. By far the biggest problem is access to actors. With crew - you can train a willing person (yourself, your spouse) to do almost any job, be it sound or makeup or whatnot... before people get bent out of shape, no, you will not have a pro level sound person as a result, but it is definitely possible - anecdote, on a short film the sound person fell through, and I had to step in (years ago) - I knew exactly zero about sound, but 5 minutes instruction at the rental place (Coffey Sound in LA) and I was good enough for a 30 minute short - there were zero complaints about sound. Obviously, you have to calibrate the script to the quality of crew - no super challenging stuff. But actors... that's tough. Lower quality performance will murder your film much faster than poor lighting. And getting good actors on no money... tough. One ray of light is that at least with actors - unlike crew - you have a ton of motivated people who just want to act, so it's possible to hit up amateur theater and the like. In a pinch, you can get non-actors who transpire to be good. But you need a good modicum of luck. Bottom line: it's not impossible to make a feature under those circumstances, but you need a metric ton of preparation, and... a metric ton of plain luck.

The bigger obstacle is calibrating motivation. If you can't live without making films, you'll find a way. But life gets in the way - I have personal experience with wanting to make a movie that I keep postponing... there's alway something - surgery, best friend has a life-altering accident and there's no one else to help, need to repair roof or we'll live in water, etc., etc., etc.. Oh well, OldCorpse, cry me a river - if you were really motivated, you'd start shooting and not worry about recovering from surgery, your friend, well, he'll understand and he can move into your spare room, what's a little leaking roof - that's what buckets on the floor are for. So you calibrate - how much are you willing to sacrifice of life getting in the way, and what is a step too far? Your cat - whom you love like a child - is sick, ignore and keep shooting? What if your wife is sick - ignore and keep shooting? Your job is gone - do you stop and look for a job first, or do you keep shooting at the risk of homelessness - what if you are willing to live in a car, but your wife is not? Only you can make that call. If you are absolutely fanatical - nothing will stop you. But you must calibrate that motivation - how far are you willing to go? And that's only half the equation - your motivation, because the other half is - what becomes of your motivation, when you realize that even with all the supreme sacrifices you're willing to make, the marketplace reality is such, that your product is doomed to never be seen by a wider audience and apart from being a huge drain will do nothing for you financially? What then? Still willing to sacrifice? Because more than a few would be willing to go to any length... as long as there's a payoff at the end, or at least a good chance of it. But what if the reality is that these days the odds of a payoff (career, financial rewards) are worse than buying a lottery ticket? Then you must be willing to make the supreme sacrifice regardless of outcome, counting on nothing, just because you cannot live otherwise. How many such cats are there out in these parts? Enough to sustain a busy internet forum on dvxuser? You tell me.
 
There's another lengthy, very similar thread ("where have all the filmmakers gone" or something. I'd say search for it but the search tool never seems to work right, at least for me). A few ideas that were posited were a) people found out how tough it was to make ANYTHING, and mostly got discouraged, b) market saturation (EVERYONE has a cam now and is a "filmmaker") made it that much harder to get noticed, c) people simply weren't posting on boards like this now if they were doing filmmaking stuff, d) the initial enthusiastic filmmakers may have grown up and moved onto to corporate etc., throwing the stuff they didn't get paid for aside. . .maybe a few other ideas.
 
Well, I was sort of one of those, too. I got into this field to make compelling television and cinema. My last low budget film was 2006 which was a very ambitious sci-fi with a lot of special effects, heavy 3d animation and large virtual sets. Since then I sacrificed very hard in the commercial field to try to build up a company that would be able to produce afore mentioned compelling television first and then cinema. I knew a media company could do more good and reach more people than one man could ever do, but it was only to have my life long best friend and co-owner lie, con and steal every dollar I sacrificed my life blood for all those years. So at this point I don't see it happening. I might perhaps sell the scripts, but that's hard to do.
 
Sorry to hear. My story is a little different. . .I only ever did shorts, never had an "ultimate goal", was into those for a while, then the novelty wore off I started getting discouraged at how hard it was to "do anything" with shorts, and that combined with anyone's lack of interest (I'd let everyone in my small "network" know when I'd finished a project, send it out to them, get maybe 5 responses) in what I was doing eventually drove the interest out of me. I envy those who say they do it 'cause they "have to" or "can't do anything else" but I don't seem to be one of those. Been looking to get back into it, sorta kinda, so we'll see.
 
firehawk said:
but it was only to have my life long best friend and co-owner lie, con and steal every dollar I sacrificed my life blood for all those years. So at this point I don't see it happening. I might perhaps sell the scripts, but that's hard to do.
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Oh that sucks. Crazy to me how people can let money destroy a life long friendship like that.
 
These threads scare me. I'll be graduating college in August, and then after a quick 3 months in Asia, will dive head-first into filmmaking. I know that I won't move away from it, but I'm scared others won't be willing to help me and the financial and emotional stress will begin. Are these reactions just from individuals living in small cities, or from those in LA? I'm looking to move to Atlanta, and I've got my mind set on TV work, but have no clue where to start. I think I'm great at filming, but with 0 creative writing ability, I'll need others to survive.

I'm young, but have already been affected positively and negatively by the influx of "filmmakers" who don't know anything other than how to turn the camera on. At least at my college, most of the people don't really care about learning anything. AND THESE PEOPLE WANT TO BE FILMMAKERS. I hope the scene in Atlanta is better.

Edit:
To clarify, I want to work on TV shows, as that's where I'm seeing the quality stuff being produced. Not commercials/live show kinds of TV work. It's a dream, I know.
 
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There are always those few, creative, passionate people who are not flakes. . .the trick is finding them/weeding them out from the morons. Good luck. Some city have filmmaker clubs/groups that dedicate themselves to this stuff. That's a place to start.

Real honest to God paid TV/film work? It's about finding the right people to bug (producers, production coodinators, line producers, unit production managers, the people who hire) and bugging them just enough to show you really want it but not so much that you're annoying. If you do it just right someone should give you a chance, eventually, to start at the bottom (PA, intern, trainee).
 
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iamlance said:
At least at my college, most of the people don't really care about learning anything. AND THESE PEOPLE WANT TO BE FILMMAKERS.
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Same where I work, we get a lot of people that seem to end up in our department because when asked what they like to do, they reply "I like to watch TV". It's really dumbing the classes down!
 
OldCorpse said:
what's a little leaking roof - that's what buckets on the floor are for.
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Where in LA do you live, that rain is remotely a problem... ok... except for a month or two...

Costco has tarps, two to a package... they work great...

On the other hand... water pipes do spring small leaks that turn walls into soggy messes, and wood in to rot... just got the downstairs flooring done, having had the bare concrete for about 6 months... no wait... 8 months now...

Ok... My excuse is the Wife got a grant to do a workshop at Burning Man this here... and hell will be paid if I work on any thing but that... or allow my day job that pays the bills to interfere...
 
Greg_E said:
Same where I work, we get a lot of people that seem to end up in our department because when asked what they like to do, they reply "I like to watch TV". It's really dumbing the classes down!
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I took several film production classes at the local junior college... and I was astonished at the total lack of interest these young whippersnappers had towards making a movie... in the production class, only three short films were made... mine was one of them... out of a class of about 20...
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
I took several film production classes at the local junior college... and I was astonished at the total lack of interest these young whippersnappers had towards making a movie... in the production class, only three short films were made... mine was one of them... out of a class of about 20...
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I'd say you are more likely to find interested committed people in theater arts than in filmmaking programs. They appreciate the hard work and organization needed to pull off any kind of production, live stage or film. They are also more attuned to the discipline of working in collaborative production environments.
 
Razz16mm said:
I'd say you are more likely to find interested committed people in theater arts than in filmmaking programs. They appreciate the hard work and organization needed to pull off any kind of production, live stage or film. They are also more attuned to the discipline of working in collaborative production environments.
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There is another JC as well as a state college a few miles away... but those don't have evening classes... and the state college is not 'cheap' to take random classes... But given the requests, etc. from say craigslists, and the response I had to my call for interested parties for a 48 hour type film making project... the response was not that enthusiastic...

Another item is that the JC that does have more classes, has been more oriented to Broadcast TV, rather than Filmmaking. Likewise for the State college I attended for my BA... I was not interested in TV production, but was interested in 'filmmaking'... I realize some may not see the difference... but that school was not setup for 'film' anything at the time, just TV Studio work, and was the PBS affiliate in the area.
 
We do single camera projects, but the vast majority of jobs would be in the studio or shooting news. It is part of most community college charters to train people for the local industry, therefor TV it is. We used to have our students in the single camera class create a mini-doc of not more than 10 minutes, back in 2003 we used to get a few good ones. We stopped doing that project when it was clear they weren't getting the concept.

Since I mentioned news, you're thinking what could be lower than the low. But don't forget that every news item tells a story. If you can't tell a fact based story and make it coherent in 2 minutes, you probably shouldn't be trying to tell a fictional story. So just because it was all studio based doesn't mean there was nothing of value to learn.
 
This thread got depressing. I guess there really aren't a whole lot of people here doing shoestring budget films anymore. I wonder if that's pretty uniform these days of if this forum just isn't the right place to be for that anymore.
 
roxics said:
This thread got depressing. I guess there really aren't a whole lot of people here doing shoestring budget films anymore. I wonder if that's pretty uniform these days of if this forum just isn't the right place to be for that anymore.
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Yes. In the script writing fora I have frequented, several have closed down, and many often don't have more than 15 or so feature length scripts submitted per month, when in the past they have had a backlog of 50 or more... like wise for short scripts.

Even the craiglist ads are pretty slim for actual filmmakers, rather than people fishing for either porn pictures, or perhaps actual opportunities in internet webcam porn...
 
Interesting thread, one that came up not too long ago and echoed alot of the same sentiments. Interesting times, for sure. Especially since it seems to be a further reaching phenomenon than just this forum.

I am old enough to remember when there was a bigger drive to create films here. I've been working in video production for the past 5 years, and recently I've started to feel a bit guilty that I lost my will to create narrative films.

One of the big reasons for me personally is that my standards for what's worth doing has increased alot. I think back in the DVX or even HVX days, it was so neat to see a professional looking movie being done by amateurs, that the actual standard for writing/storytelling were way lower. Over time, with the DSLR revolution, it's become much more common to see movies competently produced from a technical standpoint, but now the lacklustre writing/acting really stands out.

I have all the gear but it's hard to get excited without a good writer or actors. Making a movie that looks like a real movie isn't exciting anymore, whereas once upon the time, that would've been enough.

I think it's important to have standards evolve, so I don't think it's a bad thing. But me and my buddies whipping up a short that I know will likely be crap from a writing/acting standpoint is tough to bother with.
 
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