'INSIDE JOKE'-A journal of how I shot my first feature

S

Stryfe

Active member
I just shot my first feature...or movie period. I figured this was the place to talk about it and share experience.

I produced, directed, wrote, and starred in it. But the toughest part would have to be the fact that I was located in a tiny town in southern Arkansas. But thanks to Dov Simens and the DVXuser forums I was able to do it.

The movie is about a group of friends in small town Arkansas who enter awkward territory when one of them finds the perfect girl...his friends ex.

I'm still in post production, I'm picking my editor as I type.

But anyway, I've got a blog going if you'd like to see how crazy my experience was or whatever.

Blogger-http://nobudgetmoviemaking.blogspot.com/

or

Wordpress-http://stevenfarmer.wordpress.com/

I've got a myspace but it's new and needs work.
http://www.myspace.com/488971571
 
Awesome.

I'll get a trailer as soon as I can. Working on a poster as well.

I haven't been able to update anything for a week. I just now moved from small town Arkansas to the Orlando area of Florida, in order to find a competent editor that lives within driving distance.

I've had my interviews and vlogs taped for weeks, just haven't had a chance to post them. I'll get some posted this week.

Got some new blogs though.

Blogger-http://nobudgetmoviemaking.blogspot.com/

or

Wordpress-http://stevenfarmer.wordpress.com/
 
I don't know how you were able to contain yourselves for so long, but somehow you did and I'm proud of you.

And here's your reward. The new blog.

Blogger-http://nobudgetmoviemaking.blogspot.com

or

Wordpress-http://stevenfarmer.wordpress.com
 
Still haven't chosen my editor yet, but getting closer. Getting closer to getting the poster ready too.

Here's my new blog.

Blogger-http://nobudgetmoviemaking.blogspot.com

or

Wordpress-http://stevenfarmer.wordpress.com

 
great joke

great joke

Stryfe said:
I just shot my first feature...or movie period. I figured this was the place to talk about it and share experience.

I produced, directed, wrote, and starred in it. But the toughest part would have to be the fact that I was located in a tiny town in southern Arkansas. But thanks to Dov Simens and the DVXuser forums I was able to do it.

The movie is about a group of friends in small town Arkansas who enter awkward territory when one of them finds the perfect girl...his friends ex.

I'm still in post production, I'm picking my editor as I type.

But anyway, I've got a blog going if you'd like to see how crazy my experience was or whatever.

Blogger-http://nobudgetmoviemaking.blogspot.com/

or

Wordpress-http://stevenfarmer.wordpress.com/

I've got a myspace but it's new and needs work.
http://www.myspace.com/488971571
Click to expand...


was this the joke?
 
Shooting with a Deadline

Shooting with a Deadline

*I'm now posting my actual posts on dvxuser instead of linking them to my blogger. I'll re-post old posts and photos as well.


Hey, hey, hey now, it be me with another one of these. I could take you through everyday individually but this all took place in June and I was too distracted to write in my journal(not a diary) to be exact so I'll give you a good culmination of the things that took place and the lessons you can learn from them. So get ready to get educated.

My main goal for right then besides learning everything as I go, was to get all of Yvonne's(actress) scenes shot before she had to back on tour in her musical, Spelling Bee.

So the next day with the little sleep I had gathered up my non pro's and pro, got them breakfast despite the fact that I would be late meeting my DP at the location, got there and got chewed out for being late. Which I deserved.

So since we were shooting a pool scene makeup was not necessary and there were not many lines necessary, but the thing was it was about to start raining so we had to rush to get the scene done.

Good thing about rain is it doesn't pick up on camera too well, so unless it's really fat rain you can shoot without it picking it up at all. The bad thing about rain is...it's rain. And worse was the fact that this rain would be on the heavy side.

The rain came and left, so we would periodically go out and film then go back inside and start over again.

With such a tight schedule we changed the following scene to an indoor scene without really sacrificing anything.

We filmed and filmed till about midnight. The next day we started all over again.

We filmed and filmed from early in the morning till about midnight. I barely even had time to feed my cast and crew, due to how footage we had to get shot with the deadline we had.

I could also tell my host house we were shooting. It's fun at first, but once you've got fifteen people walking all around your house with equipment and having to stay in one room while being quiet so you don't interfere with the audio, it takes a toll on hospitality.

One of my main duties as a director was to make sure that everyone was having a good time. When you're not handing out six figure checks to each employee you have to be resourceful and charismatic in order to keep things running smoothly.

Those two attributes come in hand with everything, from me obtaining my cast and crew, to securing the locations.

Which brings me to the final night of shooting with my actress. We shot at the movie theatre in the next town over, luckily I had gone to highschool with the manager, Jason Reep, and he had no problem helping me out. It was actually a late matinee that night so it wasn't a problem staying there past 2 AM.

My DP had shot in movie theatre's before so it came out looking awesome. He played Wolverine without sound off the projector so it would give us the authentic movie theatre lighting in addition to giving our actors something to work off of.

After a 15 hour day of shooting I drove Yvonne to the Little Rock airport two hours out of town, drove home and crashed, knowing that the toughest part was out of the way...or was it.


nobudgetmoviemaking.com or http://stevenfarmer.wordpress.com/
 
Usually by this time the cast and crew would be ready to leave or kill you. But since less footage was necessary to shoot and we actually had time to eat and sleep now, it wasn't a problem.
Now we were able to shoot each scene multiple times, with lots of coverage. With all the time I was now able to dedicate to each scene now, I wonder how the hell I was ever able to shoot the huge amount I was doing before when Yvonne was around.
So even though less needed to be done each day, we were still spending the same amount of time doing it. And there were some complicated scenes with lots of characters in them that were coming up. Two of which could only be done during magic hour in order to do them right.
The saw mill scene was one of them. I had a choice, either shoot the scenes during the afternoon which I knew would be hard with the schedule at hand or get four hours of sleep and shoot at around 5:30 am. As much as I hate waking up early I chose the latter. We got there in morning and it further showcased why acting and filmmaking are not as glamorous as people make it out to be. We drove out to the saw mill on a saturday knowing no one would be there, and shot some exteriors while the sun was rising. Then started filming with Jacob(co-star) and I working, just like we once did years ago in real life. We grabbed two shovels and went to work, we threw some sawdust on ourselves to look dirty like we would and with all the filming and non-sleep we were getting it gave us the tired look we needed.
Then a problem happened, one of the actors had to perform a number two. But we didn't have access to the buildings that supplied the bathrooms. We had some pages from the script that had already been filmed so....yeah.
So we went back to filming, then an optimal member of the crew also had the same problem, so with the other pages of the script that had already been filmed he...yeah.
I've read scripts I wouldn't wipe my ass with, so I took this event as a good sign.
Acting like we were at work was just as hard as when we used to actually work there. When you're toting a huge log across the mill and having to drop it at just right angle, over and over and over. You get pretty damn tired.

We were done just before it was too bright and hot to be there. Now we had to shoot three more scenes. Thing is the house we had been shooting in was not about us shooting there on this saturday, we had understandably overstayed our welcome. Which was okay because these scenes could be shot in another location without a problem, just a small rewrite and we were good. It actually made it better and added another location to the film.
Uh oh. The new location that was good with us filming there had a change of heart and now we've got nowhere to film!
If it's not shot on that day than it's going to be very hard to find time to shoot it. And I've only got my actors and crew for a few more days!


nobudgetmoviemaking.com
stevenfarmer.wordpress.com
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Inside-Joke/109172101462?ref=ts
 
Controlling Chaos

Controlling Chaos

I'm back! So now is the conclusion to the cliffhanger of yesterweek. Me not have no place to film the movie, where me go? New house didn't want us to shoot there because the woman of the house determined her place too messy.

We were shooting our opening scene and another big scene. Luckily the actor who was going to shoot his one and only scene had his own place and his 3 day late pregnant wife gave him the okay to let us shoot there.

It was really a blessing in disguise, we wouldn't have been able pull off what we were planning on doing in the house we were shooting in. Too loud, too raunchy, too much liability for breaking things. This house was perfect with it's open spaces and being my friends house we could get away with a lot more.

Plus as I mentioned last time, it added another location to the movie.

So this first scene is action packed as all first scenes should be. We set up all the actors hoping with the limited given instructions they could coordinate themselves without looking stupid or rehearsed.

It was a night scene but we were shooting during the day, since it was an interior scene we were able to take care of that. We taped trash bags to the outside of all the windows and we were done.

The DP used the wheelchair as a dolly and we taped it. It turned out being the best first take through out the entire shooting! The ceiling fan got hit a little bit but that was it.

The shot after that was even better, non-pro's can be the best actor's imaginable if you know how to use them. The shot and acting was unbelievable. It didn't require a lot of skill for the acting but it was undeniably authentic as much of the acting throughout the entire filming was.

Some of the scenes were so crazy I couldn't believe my actors were so ready to do them. But a problem that had been eating at me was one of my actors had just got off work and we needed to get him here now, or we wouldn't be able to film the scene. I was finally able to get ahold of him and had another actor who had finished his scenes pick him up while we finished up other scenes.

Now as good as we were doing, the actors still had problems remember lines. Which made it difficult when trying to get your master shots. We got a decent amount of master shots, wish I could've got more but for the sake of time, and the DP's sanity we moved on to the next scene.

My two actors were now here just in time, we filmed an even crazier scene, and we were done.

My friends/actors were always able to help with crew jobs such as holding lights and such, helped out a lot. One friend blames me for ruining movies for him, the magic is gone for him now. He thinks about what's going on behind the camera every time he see's a movie now.

Wish my non-pro's had a little more time to rehearse so they would've known their lines better for more master shots in the big scenes. But if you look at all the things that you didn't get then you're ****ing yourself up. Just learn from it for you next project and think of all the things that went right that could've easily went wrong.

Two scenes left! They're outdoor and require a lot of coordination.

nobudgetmoviemaking.com
stevenfarmer.wordpress.com
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pa...2101462?ref=ts
 
Last Day of Filming

Last Day of Filming

Hey, been busy getting the movie edited among other things. But I'm back for some more story telling.

So now I've got to film a scene where I've got eight people playing football. How do you choreograph something as complex as that?

It was actually pretty easy. We went to the football field, made plays, recorded it, the end. Everyone knew what to do, and everyone went automatically went into the state of really playing the game. So it all came off organic.

There were a few problems such as when a player RAN INTO THE CAMERAMAN.

Sometimes the camera couldn't keep up with the action and things such as that but no real problems.

We had to film during the day which I didn't like. I wanted magic hour but time did not permit so we filmed then. Hot as hell and brighter than I wanted, but besides that it was great.

Another scene was shot at the basketball court but with all the dialogue in the scene we weren't able to get as many master shots as I wanted. It was getting dark soon, the curse of magic hour, so we concentrated on getting all the close-ups we needed and with the time left we got what masters we could. Enough to make it work in editing.

This was the day the photographer showed up, so all we got were photos of us playing basketball. So when I post photos of the movie people think it's an entire movie about basketball. Lesson learned, always have someone with a camera on set and make sure the photographer shows up the day they were supposed to.

That's it for the filming of the movie. Any other questions, just ask.

Next I'll move on to what to do after filming the movie.

nobudgetmoviemaking.com
stevenfarmer.wordpress.com
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pa...2101462?ref=ts
 
The first third of the movie has been edited. As scared as I was to let someone else edit my movie I'm glad I did, he's doing better than I ever expected. We should have the movie ready for SXSW(Dec. 11th). Then we'll make the trailer.
 
Editing progress

Editing progress

Still have about 25 more scenes to edit. Those include the BIG dialogue scenes and football scene. Looks like it may come out to about 75 to 85 minutes in length.
 
Editing update

Editing update

Have 18 more scenes to edit and a half a month to do it in. Not to mention color correction and other misc. things.

Won't have a trailer up until Late December. I've been trying to upload pictures to the forum. My computer has problems with that for some reason.
 
Finally have a rough cut of the movie. I want to congratulate my editor who's back is about to go out from hunching over a computer all day for the past 3 months.
 
SXSW Submission

SXSW Submission

We had it ready just in time for the SXSW film festival on Dec. 11th. While working on his other paying project, my editor had the DVD burning at home and something went wrong with the compression. So he wasn't able to get it to the post office in time.

They tried to get the post office to give them the Dec. 11th post mark anyway, but they couldn't for auditing reasons. So I had them overnight the DVD anyways and have emailed the festival everyday since and will continue until I can find out if my movie will be able to somehow make the festival review due to the circumstances and the fact I payed $100 submission fee already.

Hopefully things will work out. I don't plan on waiting around all year for the biggest festivals because I'm tired of being in post production. I know once you enter a festival you lose your world premiere status and that's the status you need in order to get into the bigger festivals, where distributors actually show up to. But SXSW was my best hope and demographic for the movie I made.

Yeah, it was only the rough cut but they would allow us to send in the final cut if done in time. I'll let you know what happens as soon as I here some news. In the meantime, we'll be working on the final cut, trailer, and getting the damn poster done.
 
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