The way to write a good independent Feature is?

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

Yeah, I also agree with you as well. Major festivals, though, take some pretty bad stuff. So it's not as crazy. If festivals are your route and you're not trying to recoup anything, then yeah, make a heart/gut-wrenching drama and have fun.

Yeah, I'm going to try my best. Leaning towards supernatural - drama, not quite horror. Think along the lines of Dead Zone.

More so than I expected to be, I'm pretty harsh on myself. But, we have different goals in mind. I'm not interested in Festivals, personally. But, if I were headed toward festivals I would've chosen something more meaningful as the content.

I hear you. I hate my stuff.
Glad it's working out for you. From what I've seen it's looking great. Reminds me a little of 'Scott Pilgrim vs The World' but I could be way off base on that.

 

[Jawa Ex Machina]

Write for locations, props and actors you already have access to.

Write scenes you can easily modify.

Get good script notes. It's worth the money. Listen to them.

Be flexible. Don't need "a yellow house with two floors". Instead, need "a house". Also, be prepared for that to change into "an apartment".

If the names of you, your cast, your crew AND the material isn't enough to sell the film alone, you can probably rely on genre conventions.
What I mean is, if you make a straight out slasher, a straight out zombie movie or a straight out found footage horror, at least people know what to expect from THAT.

Atmosphere is important as hell.

 

[tmnt]

Ha ha Kholi, I don't think I can see Mike making a heart-wrenching drama. Unless one character is wrenching a dudes brains over a wall.

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

Write for locations, props and actors you already have access to.

Write scenes you can easily modify.

Get good script notes. It's worth the money. Listen to them.

Be flexible. Don't need "a yellow house with two floors". Instead, need "a house". Also, be prepared for that to change into "an apartment".

If the names of you, your cast, your crew AND the material isn't enough to sell the film alone, you can probably rely on genre conventions.
What I mean is, if you make a straight out slasher, a straight out zombie movie or a straight out found footage horror, at least people know what to expect from THAT.

Atmosphere is important as hell.

Will do. Thanks for the tips.

Ha ha Kholi, I don't think I can see Mike making a heart-wrenching drama. Unless one character is wrenching a dudes brains over a wall.

Hey! I'm not that bad.

 

[Batutta]

Write for locations, props and actors you already have access to.

Write scenes you can easily modify.

Get good script notes. It's worth the money. Listen to them.

Be flexible. Don't need "a yellow house with two floors". Instead, need "a house". Also, be prepared for that to change into "an apartment".

If the names of you, your cast, your crew AND the material isn't enough to sell the film alone, you can probably rely on genre conventions.
What I mean is, if you make a straight out slasher, a straight out zombie movie or a straight out found footage horror, at least people know what to expect from THAT.

Atmosphere is important as hell.

And don't forget, you only need 10,000 dollars to make an AMAZING movie.

 

[Kegan]

Yeah, MAH - maybe you'll be the DVXuser role model for an AMAZING feature for $10k!

Kegan

 

[Mark Harris]

Good luck with yours. Can't wait to see the trailer.

My goal is to make a feature that gets accepted into some major festivals. That's it.
I'm not saying that's not a lofty goal or anything but that's what I'm aiming for. Beyond that it would depend on the buzz that I get.
If it sucks it doesn't matter what my goals are, it's not going anywhere. I'm just a firm believer that if you make something great, the rest will sort itself out.

Of course it helps to be prepared and try to work with contacts but I'll know if that's a waste of time or not once I see the end product.
It all starts with a killer screenplay. That's my immediate goal. One step at a time.

How about you? Happy with what you're seeing with yours?

One thing I'll say I'm learning this year, is that it's not really even about your first film. It's about your career. If you make something great, then spend time getting the right people to see it, that's a good course in my book. I believe there are only a few festivals worth caring about career-wise. But there's more than one way to skin a cat, and more than way to get something out of a festival. Regardless, going to a festival does not mean making an unsellable "dramatic" movie. I mean, have you seen the big festivals lately? Pirates of the C opened at Cannes for God's sake.

Jack plays plenty of festivals with his demented, weird, sometimes funny, horror films. Don't buy into this thing people are saying about there only being two kinds of films: "sellable" and "sappy festival movie".

You already know what you like, and I think you have some good ideas about where your strengths lie. And I think your films all have your voice. So I would advise you to stick with your voice, and ride on that. I think that has the best chance of getting you where you want to go. And for scope, I think you are already pretty good at doing compelling stories which hint at bigger things, within a small scope.

Also, check out what Lawrie's up to. He has something in the works that's very much his voice and looks to be pretty good to boot. He's definitely going places...

 

[Kholi]

Jack plays plenty of festivals with his demented, weird, sometimes funny, horror films. Don't buy into this thing people are saying about there only being two kinds of films: "sellable" and "sappy festival movie".

Well, since I'm the only one here in this thread pretty much saying that, then I'll say this and let you guys to it: my POV is that I don't want to struggle to make films forever. I can't speak for others, but I seriously do not want to do that. And, if guys like Ted Hope are having trouble doing anything other than straight up genre, I dunno what hope there is for others.

I'm down to be proven wrong, but as far as I can see (which is with a limited scope, obviously) if you want to make a career out of it, then part of that is showing you can bring in numbers/money.

ANyway, to each their own! Mark's right in that you should do exactly what you want.

 

[Jawa Ex Machina]

Well, since I'm the only one here in this thread pretty much saying that, then I'll say this and let you guys to it: my POV is that I don't want to struggle to make films forever. I can't speak for others, but I seriously do not want to do that. And, if guys like Ted Hope are having trouble doing anything other than straight up genre, I dunno what hope there is for others.

I'm down to be proven wrong, but as far as I can see (which is with a limited scope, obviously) if you want to make a career out of it, then part of that is showing you can bring in numbers/money.

ANyway, to each their own! Mark's right in that you should do exactly what you want.

There are lots of unsellable films that aren't sappy as well. Just bad.

 

[Kholi]

There are lots of unsellable films that aren't sappy as well. Just bad.

Not saying that you shouldn't make anything other than genre. Simply saying that it increases the odds against yourself, which are already stacked anyway. I guess I'm wrong though, which is cool!

As long as people are doing, that's straight too.

 

[pulpfiction007]

For those of you out there making an indie feature including the OP - Please look into un-conventional ways of telling the story ala Irreversible/Memento/Pulp Fiction, many Foreign Films, etc.

It's a great way to set your film apart that doesen't cost money - I'm not saying COPY those ideas but try to see if there's a unique way in which you could portray your concept that would serve the story better than the standard outline.
I hope you all know what I'm getting at.....don't you hate it when 1/3 of the way through a movie you can almost predict how the rest is going to play out. There's too few films out there (at any budget) that actually have that "What's going to happen next?!" quality.

BTW I'm only suggesting this IF your particular idea would benefit from it....many films are perfect being straight up and told in a linear fashion.

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

Yeah, MAH - maybe you'll be the DVXuser role model for an AMAZING feature for $10k!

Kegan

LOL! Thanks. I highly doubt that. I don't even have the 10K.

One thing I'll say I'm learning this year, is that it's not really even about your first film. It's about your career. If you make something great, then spend time getting the right people to see it, that's a good course in my book. I believe there are only a few festivals worth caring about career-wise. But there's more than one way to skin a cat, and more than way to get something out of a festival. Regardless, going to a festival does not mean making an unsellable "dramatic" movie. I mean, have you seen the big festivals lately? Pirates of the C opened at Cannes for God's sake.

Jack plays plenty of festivals with his demented, weird, sometimes funny, horror films. Don't buy into this thing people are saying about there only being two kinds of films: "sellable" and "sappy festival movie".

You already know what you like, and I think you have some good ideas about where your strengths lie. And I think your films all have your voice. So I would advise you to stick with your voice, and ride on that. I think that has the best chance of getting you where you want to go. And for scope, I think you are already pretty good at doing compelling stories which hint at bigger things, within a small scope.

Also, check out what Lawrie's up to. He has something in the works that's very much his voice and looks to be pretty good to boot. He's definitely going places...

Thanks, Mark. I really appreciate the words of wisdom. Hopefully your feature is coming along nicely. I'll have to pick your brain once I get to see what you've come up with. I'm dying to check it out and I've been watching your thread pretty closely.

For those of you out there making an indie feature including the OP - Please look into un-conventional ways of telling the story ala Irreversible/Memento/Pulp Fiction, many Foreign Films, etc.

It's a great way to set your film apart that doesen't cost money - I'm not saying COPY those ideas but try to see if there's a unique way in which you could portray your concept that would serve the story better than the standard outline.
I hope you all know what I'm getting at.....don't you hate it when 1/3 of the way through a movie you can almost predict how the rest is going to play out. There's too few films out there (at any budget) that actually have that "What's going to happen next?!" quality.

BTW I'm only suggesting this IF your particular idea would benefit from it....many films are perfect being straight up and told in a linear fashion.

Thanks for the advice. Keeping everyone guessing is definitely a plus as long as it all makes sense.

Thanks, guys.

 

[Jawa Ex Machina]

Not saying that you shouldn't make anything other than genre. Simply saying that it increases the odds against yourself, which are already stacked anyway. I guess I'm wrong though, which is cool!

As long as people are doing, that's straight too.

No I agree with you. Making genre is good thinking.
But there's an awful lot of BAD genre out there that never gets distribution, and it's never a guarantee. That's all I'm saying.

 

[agcohn]

No I agree with you. Making genre is good thinking.
But there's an awful lot of BAD genre out there that never gets distribution, and it's never a guarantee. That's all I'm saying.

There are an awful lot of genre films out there that will never see the light of day. If you ever go to AFM, you'll see hundreds if not thousands of films being pushed that will never make a dollar.

However, and in my opinion this is a really big however, a bad genre film is much more likely to sell than a bad comedy or drama. There are a lot of markets out there for schlocky horror / action films: late-night cable, on-demand, dvd, foreign markets, etc. I knew some guys that spent over $100K making one of the absolute worst horror films I have ever seen, but they made all of their money back at the very first film market they went to with the film. Even bad genre films can make money, as long as you don't spend too much making them.

 

[Saharanturtle]

Not saying that you shouldn't make anything other than genre. Simply saying that it increases the odds against yourself, which are already stacked anyway. I guess I'm wrong though, which is cool!

As long as people are doing, that's straight too.

I don't understand, are you saying its easier to sell a movie if its a genre film? (Edit: I see thats what others are saying^^^ I didn't refresh the page before I posted/since this morning)

Also, I'm not sure on what exactly a genre film is. Is it a film that's "made with the clear purpose of fitting the mould of a specific genre, such as horror films, crime films, science fiction films, westerns, etc as a way of ensuring that the resulting film appeals to the fans of that one particular genre?" (According to a quick Google search I just made)

 

[Kholi]

I don't understand, are you saying its easier to sell a movie if its a genre film?

Also, I'm not sure on what exactly a genre film is. Is it a film that's "made with the clear purpose of fitting the mould of a specific genre, such as horror films, crime films, science fiction films, westerns, etc as a way of ensuring that the resulting film appeals to the fans of that one particular genre?" (According to a quick Google search I just made)

Most movies are genre, it just depends on how heavy and how it can be labeled.

And, yeah, most people I know will tell you it's easier to sell certain genre's than others.

See agcohn's post above yours.

To each their own of course, do what you feel is best. No one way is the right way, and I guess great stories sell without mass appeal etc from the looks of it.

 

[Michael Anthony Horrigan]

There are an awful lot of genre films out there that will never see the light of day. If you ever go to AFM, you'll see hundreds if not thousands of films being pushed that will never make a dollar.

However, and in my opinion this is a really big however, a bad genre film is much more likely to sell than a bad comedy or drama. There are a lot of markets out there for schlocky horror / action films: late-night cable, on-demand, dvd, foreign markets, etc. I knew some guys that spent over $100K making one of the absolute worst horror films I have ever seen, but they made all of their money back at the very first film market they went to with the film. Even bad genre films can make money, as long as you don't spend too much making them.

They made the 100K back? With a crappy film? Anymore details on how they swung this?

 

[agcohn]

They made the 100K back? With a crappy film? Anymore details on how they swung this?

I don't know the exact specifics of the deal they got, but they sold the film at AFM, and the license fee they received for the US rights (On-Demand, DVD, Netflix, etc) basically covered their negative costs.

Now the film itself doesn't look and sound like crap; it's just the acting and story that are absolutely terrible. But it's not like somebody is going to order the film On-Demand and immediately say "WTF is this?" In terms of on-screen production value, they did a good job.

It also has a lot of T&A. Actually, now that I think about it, I probably would have enjoyed the film a lot more if I had muted the sound...

 

[Kholi]

Any way you can share the name of the feature? So I can netflix it.

I'm not surprised, at all. They obviously had an idea of what they could sell and what they could not.

 

[agcohn]

Sent you a PM with the title.