How to make a film - Branding

For most people preproduction of a low budget film can be pretty overwhelming. Lets face it…for the most part it just isn’t very much fun. Very few people really enjoy doing paperwork, writing shotlists, making phone calls, and scheduling meetings. Well tough.

The fact is anything you fail to do in preproduction will cost you five to ten times more time, money, and headache later on. It’s even possible that something you fail to do in preproduction could make your movie completely unsellable, or even make you lose your house and car in a law suit. Yes, it’s that serious.

So its pretty clear that dotting your i’s and crossing your t’s is an important part of completing your movie. But how do we go about making the most of the limited time we have to do peproduction on our film?

As with all things worth doing, the first step is a plan. So here is a step by step guide for what you need to do before you expose a single frame of film.

1. Get the script – You have three options. Option a script that is already written, pay someone to write the script, or write it yourself. Regardless of which way you choose make sure the script is registered with both your U.S. copyright office, and the Writer’s Guild of America (or your appropriate equivolent agencies for your own country).
2. Breakdown the script – Now comes the painstaking task of pulling the script apart to its barebones. You need to find every single thing that shooting this movie entails. If in the last scene of the film involves a little girl giving your hero a black rose…you don’t want to arrive on set and realize you need to send someone to the store for a black rose. That will put you three hours behind if you are lucky – it will probably be much worse. Here are some things to concentrate on when breaking down a script:
• Locations – How many and what type. This will be important for the next two steps
• Characters – List out every single character, and take note of how many scenes they appear in, how many pages their role covers, and how many lines of dialogue they have. Don’t forget any featured extras either!
• Wardrobe – You will need at least one outfit for each character. Determine if the story is such that the character will need one or more additional wardrobe options. If your story has a flashback of “Ten years ago” your hero better not be wearing the same suit he’s wearing today.
• Props – Don’t forget to get all of your props before hand. Remember even simple things are props such as cell phones, pens, or glasses.
• Stunts and FX – Note any stunts or effects that you might have to perform. Remember anything even remotely dangerous is a stunt. This includes things like throwing the coffee mug against the wall or tripping over something on the floor.
3. Do a rough schedule – Now, I don’t mean schedule it specifically to the dates. The actual shoot date is probably still subject to change at this point. Instead, just figure out how many days it will take to do this shoot, and roughly how many days you’ll need for each scene. A way to figure this is to estimate that you can shoot 5 pages per day. However, make sure to account for any difficult effects or complex actions scenes as these will surely take more time. You should also try not to make sure you won’t have a day where you move locations more than once. Location moves eat up at least two and half hours of time, and if you move locations twice you’ve nearly lost half of your day just in travel
4. Scout locations – Get some preliminary verbal agreements from some location owners as to what they will want in return for you shooting there. I don’t recommend getting anything in writing at this point unless they offer their location for free. At this point you don’t know what your shooting dates are, and you probably don’t know how much money you have to spend on locations. So at best you are just building up a bank of possible locations for when it comes time to getting things nailed down.
5. Budget your shoot – Determine how much you’ll need to actually make this thing work. There are entire books written on budgeting since its such a complex subject. For your budget it will probably need to be done in reverse. That means you take the amount of money you have and figure out how you can make that work. At this point you may realize you need to refine the script because some parts of it aren’t feasible.
6. Raise some money – If you insist on not working within the budget you already have, then you better get out there and raise some money.
7. Legal work – Get all the necessary forms: Actor releases, location releases, rental agreements etc. Incorporate your film as its own entitity for legal protection (such as an LLC or S corp). Make sure to work with a good attorney who understands the entertainment industry. Money spent on legal work is pretty much always worth it in the end.
8. Hire crew – Get an experienced DP, and have him help you find the rest of your crew.
9. Audition actors – Keep auditioning until you find the right people for the right parts. Make sure to tape the auditions as well.
10. Confirm locations – Go back to all of those locations you’ve scouted and get everything in writing. Try to get each one to give you as much time at their location as possible, but if at all possible avoid any nonconsecutive time. In other words, don’t fall for the “You can shoot here every Sunday if you want”. If you need the place for more than one day, then you’ll more than likely find that after your first shooting day there the owner is fed up with you and has no intention of letting you back next Sunday. You may even have it in your contract that you can shoot on these nonconsecutive days…but what are you going to do when the owner refuses? Sue? I bet you don’t have the money for that, nor would it give you much financial reward for doing so. Remember owners are very unlikely to kick you out, but its very easy for them to not let you back in.
11. Build the shot lists and storyboards - Now that you have locations its a good idea to start planning how you will shoot each scene. Storyboards are great, but may times a storyboard by an artist is worth little more than pretty artwork. They often don’t have any bearing on the reality of the location, and thus are pretty useless. Instead, I recommend storyboarding with 3d software, such as Frame Forge.
12. Lock the schedule – With your location agreements, actor commitments, and shot lists in hand you should have a rough idea of exactly where you need to be and when. Write the schedule down and give it to everyone on the cast and crew.