Why you should make a GOOD short...

Great post dadoboy. I didn't know that they cracked down on filmmakers that harshly out in LA. I thought that it would be easier to make films out there. Go figure.

But your post really drives home that there are so many factors, one of which is where the filmmaker lives and where they plan on shooting their film. There are just so many things that go into it that affect budget that we really can't rule any absolutes.
 
dadoboy said:
I'm not sure how one can make a short film for under 1K in Los Angeles county. I know some of you have done it though. Unless you shoot primarily interiors in locations where you have the permission from the owners to shoot without permit. Permits are expensive here, and sometimes you need to get 2 two for a location.

Guerilla filmmaking is a dicey gamble here. The times that I've shot or have been on crews without all the proper permits, it's been a 50-50 take on whether the they were shut down or not, and if you were shut down it was followed by threats.

To get away with it, you can't be shooting HMIs or lights through windows, because even if you have permission from the owner of the house, you still need a $500 city permit. Most of the short films I've worked on have been in controlled environments for the most part, and the cheapest one where everyone worked for free was around $3K, most of it going into permits, lights and food.

All the more power to you if you have the luck and balls to go guerilla here though!

Other areas of the country have an advantage doing it super cheap because you can get away with guerilla stuff way easier. Except maybe New York.
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I don't know. It seems easy here in the wild west. But my friend told me the tale of trying to make a porno when he was in college, I believe in NJ, but the mob came calling and that was the end of that.
 
Chris_Keaton said:
I don't know. It seems easy here in the wild west. But my friend told me the tale of trying to make a porno when he was in college, I believe in NJ, but the mob came calling and that was the end of that.
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Now THAT sounds like a story worth hearing.
 
Chris_Keaton said:
Right on Lawrie, I agree with you again. I heard a quote once, not sure who said or that I'm getting it right, Lawrie correct me if I'm wrong --
"A director that has himself as a writer is like a defendant that has himself as a lawyer." You get the point.
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Good point. That's part of the reason why I hand over my scripts to some of the best writers on the forum and have them tear it apart for me.

A good writer must also remember that when he hands a script over to a good director that some changes might be needed, especially if the writer is the only one to have read the script. Otherwise they become the example in your quote, in a way.

:beer:
 
dadoboy said:
Other areas of the country have an advantage doing it super cheap because you can get away with guerilla stuff way easier. Except maybe New York.
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But NYC is good because permits are free and all in all, the Mayor's office makes the process pretty easy. I'm with you, I would never try to do what I've done over the past few years in LA...seems insanely hard.

M
 
Mark Harris said:
But NYC is good because permits are free and all in all, the Mayor's office makes the process pretty easy. I'm with you, I would never try to do what I've done over the past few years in LA...seems insanely hard.

M
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In Maryland no one really seems to care unless you are blocking off a street or something. I mean I have shot 7 person shoot outs in broad day light with blank firing weapons in neighborhoods with no trouble from the fuzz. Of course they showed up and we told them we were shooting a movie and all they said was we could not fire the guns after 11pm. We never get permission unless it's in a place of business.

...And I would shoot a feature for 20k as opposed to a short film. It would have to be a fairly simple feature, but simple can be great with the right script and crew.
 
Michael Anthony Horrigan said:
Good point. That's part of the reason why I hand over my scripts to some of the best writers on the forum and have them tear it apart for me.

A good writer must also remember that when he hands a script over to a good director that some changes might be needed, especially if the writer is the only one to have read the script. Otherwise they become the example in your quote, in a way.

:beer:
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Yep, I don't think anything any one person does can be as good as a team of talented people can produce.
 
Richard J. Johnson said:
In Maryland no one really seems to care unless you are blocking off a street or something. I mean I have shot 7 person shoot outs in broad day light with blank firing weapons in neighborhoods with no trouble from the fuzz. Of course they showed up and we told them we were shooting a movie and all they said was we could not fire the guns after 11pm. We never get permission unless it's in a place of business.

...And I would shoot a feature for 20k as opposed to a short film. It would have to be a fairly simple feature, but simple can be great with the right script and crew.
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Well, in Maryland, they EXPECT guns to be shot all day. I saw The Wire...:)
 
dadoboy said:
I'm not sure how one can make a short film for under 1K in Los Angeles county. I know some of you have done it though. Unless you shoot primarily interiors in locations where you have the permission from the owners to shoot without permit. Permits are expensive here, and sometimes you need to get 2 two for a location.
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We shot "Where the Heart Lies" pretty much guerilla on an ultra-low budget and without permits by calling in favors for locations (mansion in Palos Verdes, offce in Pasadena and a motel in the boonies). We snuck a bunch of gear up the back elevator at a hotel and stole several other scenes to complete the film. But, definitely, you are dead-on that shooting in the zone is a f*cking pain in the butt whenever you move outside that kind of interior-intensive project. Pulling permits in L.A. is an exercise akin to waterboarding -- it quickly gets painful. And, of course, when you shoot anything involving pyro things escalate with the need to satisfy the fire marshal and arrange for water trucks etc.
 
The only reason they made District9 is because the studio would not trust him with Halo. Some people say "fell through" others would say rejected, denied, etc. Even with Peter Jackson supporting him, they did not want him directing Halo. What the studio says, goes. I wonder if the major studios have had any involvement on the difficulty you guys have in getting permits, locations, etc. After all, you are technically the competition. It's like Tesla trying to start something in Detroit 20 years ago.
 
$20,000 for a short? You can't sell a short like you can a feature. I would make a feature in a second over a short. I'm also not 100% on the notion that more people is a better production. I think a one man crew has energy that a picture can lose with a large crew. Also there is a lot of explaining to the crew which takes time. I guess whatever works good for a filmmaker is good as long as the end result is the same, entertaining the audience. If entertaining the audience is no longer in the picture then it is just an ego piece.

I don't know about anybody else but I think I would rather have District9 as my first film debut rather than Halo. 9 times out of 10 a game adaptation is a failure at the box office and I wouldn't want to take that chance then be cast off as the guy that made that failure. While the whole time it was the black coats butting heads with the Director because they thought they knew what would sell despite their repeated failures in the game adaptation genre. Trying to find work after that could probably be a pain in the arss. I would probably pull out unless I had full creative control and I wouldn't be surprised if that is what happened. I bet things worked out for the better.
 
I'm a complete novice when it comes to filmmaking, make-up effects, all of it...my friend just gave me CS4 master collection so I'm starting to learn that now, but I figured the best way to make something happen in film...is to make something happen, consistently.

I'm surprised that more budding filmmakers aren't doing web series. I've filmed two episodes now (which means I've tried composing a moving picture exactly twice now), and I feel like I've learned so much! And because I have complete control of every aspect of the production, I knew that the character I was writing about would have to be agorophobic and have a stay-at-home job and that we'd have extremely limited access to anyone who had any idea how to act!

And each episode costs about 10 bucks for extra make-up when I need it. Even in this last episode we got a pretty famous Australian group, The Beautiful Girls, to donate a song to the cause! You'd be surprised how awesome people can be!!

The important IMO is to be filming consistently, contantly building up a fanbase (our show has over 250 fans on facebook in just the first month!) so that you have something tangible to show an investor.

If you have 5,000 people pre-ordering something you're doing, and potentially a decent reel after shooting for 2 years non-stop (there has to be SOMETHING worthwhile in all that, right?) that to me would be something private investors would be interested in.

Just film, film, film, I think. Have a complete piece at the end of each month. And then, heck, at the end of the year, if you've been making 8 minute pieces every month, you've got a whole movie that probably cost you a few hundred bucks.

Totally in my novice opinion, though! ;)
 
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It's best to get all the bad films out of you first. The experience of making all the 100's of common mistakes is an important part of it all. Once you come out through the other side you are that much closer to making quality work.
 
I remember seeing blookamps work in a short about a robotic cop that was filmed like an advertisement for an actual product about 4-5 years ago.

Really awesomely done, when i saw district 9 i thought the style looked familiar sure enough i had seen his work years ago.

its less than 1.5 mins

check it out here, very cool stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-IainlpGzg
 
i wouldnt personally say that someones motivation for producing a good short film should be the hope that they will somehow be chosen to direct next summers sleeper blockbuster, but i would encourage anyone to take whatever skill / talent / equipment / time / ect they have and do thier absolute best because that is how you get better. and it may not get you noticed untill you actually get better first. everybody has to start somewhere ..and we all start out in the shallow end of the kiddie pool, but if i saw some kid pulling backflips off the seahorse over there, chances are they are going to be doing great things by the time they get oevr to the deep end.

..now while shorts arent all neccesarily "kiddie pool" in nature. i think we all understand that from the first time we pick up a camera, and were trying to train our hands and brains to get the controls down, by the time were making serious shorts we generally have our eyes on something bigger. and i wouldnt say that making a kick butt short is any sort of decent odds shortcut to jumping into those bigger things, but i do think its very very good practise for it, and before you know it there will be nothing left to practise. thats when you know your ready. from there you should have a large body of quality work behind you that anyone can look at and know that youve got what it takes and have the patience and professionalism to do things right. ..but more importantly you yourself should be sure and confident to stand on top of your work and reach higher.

the reality is simply that 99.9% of the time things do not just fall into peoples laps, theres a much longer story to why most people succeed, and its usually pretty much built around them applying themselves and doing quality work continually throughout thier career, a few of the right connections, and a sprinking of pixie dust.
 
DChang said:
The only reason they made District9 is because the studio would not trust him with Halo. Some people say "fell through" others would say rejected, denied, etc. Even with Peter Jackson supporting him, they did not want him directing Halo. What the studio says, goes. I wonder if the major studios have had any involvement on the difficulty you guys have in getting permits, locations, etc. After all, you are technically the competition. It's like Tesla trying to start something in Detroit 20 years ago.
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It actually was not about trust according to Jackson. He stated that the day before they were about to receive a large sum of money, the studio called them and tried to renegotiate the terms and both declined and that was when D9 got going. maybe there was a lack of trusting him with that kind of money who knows, but jackson felt otherwise. Jackson and Blokamp were pretty pissed off about it to. I just can't find the link to the article with jackson and Blokamp.
 
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