I’ve done this three times now. I decided to use my own scripts and go down the producer route, getting the film produced via a cast & crew.

I’m not going to hold back here, it’s [swear word] hard and not particularly enjoyable. However, I think it’s been an invaluable experience that helped me grow as a writer. I’ve also got to experience the film festival circuit, film platforms such as Amazon, Vimeo and Alter as well as the world of distribution as one of them got a distribution deal.

Producing is not something I’d volunteer for again, although I do have enough experience now to help out in that area and have done so on several shorts. However, I would recommend it.

Yeah, it's hard... because you're responsible for everything. Everybody looks to you to sort things out. Both the Producer and Director need to have a strong character. It's a massive headache. Well worth doing at least once but like Mark, I'm not interested in pursuing it. It's too much effort. I far prefer writing things down... at my own pace.

I’m editing my fourth film right now so I’ll add my two cents. Whatever location you choose make sure you can go back for some pick up shots. As a newbie you’ll almost always find you needed this shot or that once editing. Also, print out some storyboard templates and draw crude pictures to illustrate every shot, every second of the film best you can all the way through.

A DP will only shoot what you tell them to. An editor can only edit what you give them.
And I pay my cast $50 a day. My sound guy is $10 an hour. I own my camera and lighting. I feed everyone of course. All in all my short films cost me between $400 and $800 right now depending on props. Or if you have to repaint a bathroom because you splattered fake blood everywhere and it doesn’t come off the walls. Best of luck with it, it’s a ton of work but I find it more rewarding then just writing.

James

Some things to consider:

How much time you have to spend on the learning process.

Your age.

How deep your pockets are.

What the end goal is.


If you are very rich you can pay professionals to do everything. You'll be the Executive Producer and then basically borrow all the skills and a group of people will make your project.

With enough money you don't even need to do anything particularly.

But you're probably going to lose all the money you put in, and because you're borrowing all the skills you might not learn a lot.


The other way is to simply do everything yourself and spend as close to nothing as possible.

If you're doing that I would personally make about ten or so films that cost absolutely nothing. Most directors make around 10-15 before they start getting a hang of it.

Only buy a camera if you're going to use it all the time. They get outdated so fast they are a waste of money unless you are shooting all the time. It doesn't have to be making an actual film...maybe you're just learning how different shots work, what different lenses do, how to pull focus, or you're taking photographs...but unless you're constantly using it it's a waste of money. For a project hire one out on Friday. You then return it on Monday. You get three days for the price of one. Hire companies don't work weekends.


Also bear in mind that along with the camera you'll need allsorts of other stuff: Lenses, focus pull, tripod, Dolly and track, sliders, Gimbals, Microphones, Sound recorders, Nd Filters, Lights, Stands, Bounce boards, filters, light meters etc depending on what you're shooting, where you're shooting, what time you're shooting etc...it's complicated and gets more so the more ambitious you go. Good quality stuff lasts forever. Cheap stuff breaks almost immediately unless you treat it extremely well and can be actively dangerous.



Use available locations: Parks, Churchyards etc....don't pay for locations. Use your house, friends houses etc

Collaborate for free, don't hire people.


Certain DOPs come with free equipment. I don't mean their own (which is also true). I mean that certain privileged people have access to full grip trucks of free equipment from the best companies. They tend to be the daughters and sons of established DOPs. It's also the case that someone who has been to a renowned film school or is going to go will also be given special treatment...it's a way of marketing for the future. This might be beyond where you are now, but it's good to know once you develop even a tiny reputation (the better your films get, the more you attract higher standard people). Hire one, you get everything...and I do mean everything. But you need to have professional grips who know how to use it all. So although you can get even the most ridiculous cranes, grip gear and Hollywood cameras for nowt...you won't get the people qualified to use it safely for nowt. The number of actual film professionals is tiny...and they all know each other. As in your pro actor can phone someone up and check on whether the grip is good enough.

Download a free editing package and learn to edit. It's pretty easy and there's websites and tutorials everywhere for specific stuff.

Sound is absolutely critical. The quality of the gear, how you use it, post production. Bad sound kills a film over anything else. You might want to get a sound guy or two in...otherwise you'll really have to organise yourself really well.

Remember that the quality of the camera is less important than the camera being right for the story. You can film a pro quality film on an IPhone especially IF the story is about people filming on a iPhone.

There is a valid argument that if you can't make a decent film on just an iPhone...there's no reason you'd be able to make one on a high end Arri Cam. The better the camera, the more everything shows up on screen...your lighting, your production design, the make up on the faces of the actors etc

Production design is absolutely key as well. Learn that as fast as possible...and use places that already look great on camera.

Filmmaking can be enormously expensive....and most filmmakers don't budget for marketing. Once the film is completed, that's where another shit load of money comes in...even just sending it to festivals costs a fortune. Some people have entered 100 and been binned off from all of them: That's minimum $5000 for absolutely nothing.

There's only a handful of festivals that actually matter: Cannes, Berlin, LA, Sundance, a couple of others. They're usually the ones that have a market (which means that people with actual chequebooks attend).

Other than marketing the hardest part is deliverables. Crates of contracts covering everything and everyone involved and the locations..and then all the film stuff with audio on different tracks, subtitles, art work and a thousand other things. That shit alone is pretty daunting on a big project.

Overall,  I'd always recommend starting small, if you have the time. Give yourself the chance to learn without pressure and to enjoy it.

It's very much a vocation. You either get the bug and simply HAVE to do it, no matter how hard, or it's not for you. Like all creative pursuits, if you can be happy doing something else, do that instead. It's only for people who have no choice in the matter.

Rick and James, absolutely great stuff there. Really appreciate the thoughts, as I know you’ve both been down this road a few times.  It feels daunting, having seen a couple of my scripts filmed but only seeing it from the writer’s side of things (and not necessarily pleased with how it turned out).  Thus, thought I would come at it from a different angle. Be the director and get my vision on the screen.

But not having the experience I know I need to start small, get the experience, and learn from the school of hard knocks. Make mistakes, but don’t spend outrageous amounts of money making those mistakes. Not shoot something to enter in festivals now, but just get the education in.

I’ve done some editing before but not on the more advanced programs. More like on Adobe Premier Elements. I understand that Adobe Premier Pro is now being preferred over Final Cut Pro but not ready to make that leap to a big time editing program yet. I like your suggestion Rick of just downloading a free program and learning the ropes there.

Just from both of your experiences, what has your shooting schedule been like in terms of pages per day?

Also for everyone — I didn’t think to ask this, but how many of you do a table read ahead of time?  Rehearsals and walk throughs? Blocking out shots?  Do you prefer to shoot indoors or out? Just thinking now about some of the minute details.

Thanks again,
Gary

Only experience I have: 7pages with a mostly professional crew and semi-pro cast... started filming at 8 in the morning and finished at 11 at night. 2 locations. One outside, one inside. Multiple setups inside, but all in the same room.

Long, fun day. Trashed the poor house (nothing destructive... just overwhelmed the place), but it was the producer's, so she knew what she was getting into.

No idea how much she spent... but, she handed out a bunch of envelopes that day. None to me.

We shot this in January in about seven hours. https://vimeo.com/315579657 Password is kirtland.

I rushed it as I tend to rush things. There’s a few awkwardly long takes because I didn’t have the right shots to cut to. It was a 7 page script to begin with.

The 8 page script we just finished took four nights and a day.  We wanted to create a thunderstorm so we got to deal with a shitty DIY rain machine, strobe lights and all kinds of problems.

All depends on your script and your crew. I’ve seen teams on the 48hr film festivals shoot five or six locations in 12 hours but they have 20 people or more and it’s basically a race. The smaller your crew the more setup time you’re going to need.

James

It takes a looong time to set up everything. The elevator film Dena and I did, Coulrophobia, we started shooting in the morning and around 1am or so, people were dropping and we had to quit. That whole film was shot in our DP´s living room. We had the elevator made prior.

We also did a little comedy thing called The Curfew and that one we only spent 6 hours on.

Impossible to say. Depends on what you're shooting, where, when and how complex the shots are, how many takes you want.

If you're taking a lot of care over everything, especially the lighting.. It can take a long time.

Table reads/rehearsals are essential. First of all, the dialogue may look spectacular on the page but as soon as they start speaking it, you'll spot the issues and need to tweak the dialogue. Secondly, if you are on a tight budget and schedule, you'll need to shoot the scenes as fast as possible. The more prep you can do up-front, the better.

Thanks, Mark - appreciate the input.

I guess a final question on this for those of you who have delved into it. Knowing what you know now, would you do it all again (albeit maybe a tad differently). In other words, did you find at the end of the day it was a worthwhile, fulfilling experience for you?

Yes. I would do it every single day if I could.

It can feel like wasted time and effort when a film ends up getting just a couple of thousand views online. I am however driven to get better. The ultimate would be to make a feature film. So yes, I will keep doing this even though it seems thankless at times.

I would, yes. Despite the hard work, when it's finished and out there, it opens up a world of opportunities.

James, great film. I just rated it on IMDb.

Gary, I've done this a few times in the past, all one-man-band freebies. I made one as a daily challenge just to see if I could do it. There was a bit of Cinéma vérité going on, but it told the true story of a quarter-life crisis I was going through at the time. I knew what I wanted to do, and filmed it thusly before I even wrote a script. Once I was finished, I wrote one retroactively and dubbed my narration. I didn't have a mic at the time, so I had to use the camera's built-in mic. I eventually EQ'd it to sound the least terrible I could manage. But the worst issue to tackle was that when the scene switched from black and white to color, I had a strong orange/brown/bronze color cast from the lamps. I guess I forgot to white balance. Anyway, I finally got the footage color corrected.

Around the same time, I made a short film compiling video I had taken of my oldest cat in the year or so before she died, when she started to socialize more. Again, no mic yet, so I had to make due with what I had. Also, I edited it in Windows Movie Maker, and I couldn't figure out how to change the frame rate to 24. So it's stuck at 30... and interlaced.

In 2014 or so, my camera died. It was a cheapo standard-def camcorder that could shoot 16:9 and simulate 24 fps. When that one died, my grandparents gave me a cheap HD Sony just before we went on a 2015 vacation. Unfortunately for my needs, it only shoots 60i/p. And since I had upgraded to HD, I found Windows Movie Maker to be incompatible. (In fact, I wouldsave videos, and the picture would end up scrambling, and all you'd see were diagonal bars across the screen.) I chose Blender 3D as a replacement, though I have recently begun to see its limitations, especially with longer clips.

I have another one I shot from c. 2015 to just before we moved in 2017. A black and white 50s-style B movie about a giant hand. Some of it was shot before I finally got my mic (a Zoom H2N), but since there's very little dialogue in it anyway, I re-recorded my two lines with the Zoom. I haven't edited this one yet, but I'm planning to soon.

Just last night/early morning, I finally put the finishing touches on my first video edited using Avid Media Composer | First (the free version of the popular editor). You can read all about it here.

Despite any headaches or learning curves, it's definitely worth it. Make your mistakes now, instead of when you're shooting an important project.

Hope this helps.