$70 worth movie in CANNES !!

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directorik said:
As you said Michael, we all have opinions.

Your opinion is the cast was stellar, mine is that they weren’t.
That shouldn’t change your mind on the movie and stating my
opinion wasn’t meant to do that. Or to minimize your opinion on
the cast. When I think of the term “stellar” I don’t see it as an
opinion - the skill of the actor - but a term that means “stars”
in the sense of known.

Just a different opinion. Just as you and I have a different
opinion on what is “independent”. In your eyes they were stellar,
in mine they weren’t. You offer yours - I offer mine. And that’s
what this forum is all about.

Opinion aside; the Canon XL-1s was (and is) a SD (standard
definition) camera. DV means Digital Video. DV can be SD, HDV and
HD.
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Of course. Opinions...we're all allowed them. :)

Stellar relates to the awesomeness of something...not the 'star' draw they posses. But you think it referes to the 'name' behind them. Gotcha. Understood. Iz coo.

I can't believe 28 was SD...that's very hard to believe. I won't argue with facts of course. It must be a really nice SD cam...because ALL of the SD stuff I see has an extremely prominent camcorder homevideo look...28 looked much higher resolution, and much higher quality than any SD production I've seen. There must have been some nice grading, CC and post work.

As far as thier skill...being an actor myself, I very much admire all of the talent in 28. I think they did a superb job--especially the father Brendan Gleeson...that dude is amazing.
 
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It's Totally Possible!

Hi there! I'm brand new here and joined to network and chat, get ideas, etc. I saw this thread and it made me chuckle. I must say that in all honesty, my husband and I have been making films for 2 years now. We have made several features and all but 1 cost us under $100 AND are out in distro now.

We don't own our own camera, but we know people who do and believe it or not, we've always been able to get pretty decent names to act for us for free ONLY because there's so little else going on right now, for the most part, and they know that if they are in one of our flicks, it's going to get out there and it's going to be credits for them as well as exposure and a hell of a lot of fun.

Our best looking film didn't cost us a dime other than the gas money to the location 10 minutes from our house! We had a guy who got a camera from his parents for xmas as the DP. We used a horrible sound getup by most filmmakers' perspectives, but it got the job done and we were able to fix it a bunch in post. The location we used was completely free to us. Our friend was a caretaker on a 20+ acre ranch and they let us shoot there for free. The actors all acted for free because they liked the script and knew it would get done. We edited on a work computer and the whole shoot took 2 days.

It can be done and I 1000% believe that this guy made a great movie for the price they're talking about. It makes perfect sense to me because we've done it and we're living proof. :cool: No we're not at Cannes but have never tried either. Don't knock it till you've tried it. We'll probably never win an Oscar, but we're not working the 9 to 5 grind either so who cares. We're doing what we love and making a comfortable living at it which is a lot more than most of the people in the world can say.
 
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Welcome to indietalk, creepsgirl.

This brings up the usual question from me.

When you get these actors to act for you for free and camera
owners to shoot for you do you feed them? If you do where does
the money for food come from?

I’m currently prepping for a one day shoot. I have 6 crew and 14
actors donating their time. I’m shooting for about 14 hours. I
just bought five, 24 packs of bottled water for $15. A nice
basket of fruit for 20 people is going to cost about $20. Coffee
is $8. My very simple, limited craft service table of snacks will
rune me about $25. That puts me at just about $70 - 93% of this
guys entire budget and 70% of yours.

And I haven’t even mentioned the two meals I intend to offer the
people volunteering on my little short. Just pizza and chicken,
but pizza and chicken (with the fixin’s) for 20 people is going
to cost more than your entire budget.

Now if you don’t pay to feed your cast and crew but someone else
does then I wonder if it’s really accurate to say you spent under
$100. Or do you not offer them even bottled water for the length
of the shoot?
 
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Creepsgirl
I also have a question.

How do you shoot a feature in 2 days?

And no, it's not impossible, it's not logically, and I'd say highly amature.

I also think the movie 'Collin' looks like crap, and that just proves the production value was low.

Horrible films get into festivals and get distributed, that's just the way it works.
 
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M1chae1 said:
I can't believe 28 was SD...that's very hard to believe. I won't argue with facts of course. It must be a really nice SD cam...because ALL of the SD stuff I see has an extremely prominent camcorder homevideo look...28 looked much higher resolution, and much higher quality than any SD production I've seen.
Click to expand...

As I know you have read, I always say that the camera isn't
the main component in getting a good picture. It can help, of
course, but the skill of the people involved is much more important.

Since ALL of the SD stuff you've seen looks like a " camcorder
homevideo" you should see a few more movies shot in SD.

Baghead
Inland Empire
Supersize Me
Pieces of April

All look great and all shot on standard definition.

You may have seen my trailer for "dark crimes". Shot SD.
 
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Motorstorm said:
"How do you shoot a feature in 2 days?"


Pretty easy if its all in one take like that Russian ark film but of course it takes months of planning
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Yes, but I doubt her feature was shot in one take. It's nearly impossible to shoot a feature length film in two days--even if you pulled two all-nighters.

Creepsgirl:

The film you said was shot in two days...is that a feature? I would love to hear how you guys shot an 80+ minute movie in two days. I don't mean this at all to talk trash...I'm seriously interested in how you guys did that. Can you give a brief run-down of what your shooting style was? Did you shoot only masters? Was there any additional coverage? Medium shots? Two shots? CUs? Roughly how many takes per shot did you do?

Also, I'm curious as Rik mentioned: did you feed your production staff and talent? Who paid for the food? Also, did you purchase any tapes for your camera?

Thanks.


And what about post production? How do these films claim to be this little, when they haven't even talked about the cost of DVDs and cases, or posters, or domain space for the website, or any of this marketing/printing mumbo jumbo...isn't that all considered part of a film's budget?
 
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directorik said:
As I know you have read, I always say that the camera isn't
the main component in getting a good picture. It can help, of
course, but the skill of the people involved is much more important.

Since ALL of the SD stuff you've seen looks like a " camcorder
homevideo" you should see a few more movies shot in SD.

Baghead
Inland Empire
Supersize Me
Pieces of April

All look great and all shot on standard definition.

You may have seen my trailer for "dark crimes". Shot SD.
Click to expand...

I've seen a few of those, and you can tell some of them are SD. I don't necessarily mean they look like backyard camcorder amateur films...I mean to say that you can usually tell a film is shot on SD...no matter how skilled the camera-op is, the DP, or the lighting director...you can't get away from pixels. I've worked on several SD productions (utilizing framemode, 24p, even Cinalook and Filmlook) and no matter what, you can tell it's not HD...

I only say I'm surprised with 28...because it blew up so nicely, and really does look like HD. I suppose there are other films out there that know how to make SD look good as well...but let's be honest...most don't look that great. The proof is in the pudding...or in the detail I should say.

Look at films on Youtube...watch them in SD....and then re-watch them in HD...the difference is huge. And although that might be an over-exaggeration of my point...it does make the point the differences in quality between SD and HD.
 
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The best i've ever managed is an 8 minute amateur movie shot in one day so two days may add to 16 minutes. Most stuff i've made took me days maybe weeks and ended up being three minutes so i can't see how you done 80 minutes or more in two days
 
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M1chae1 said:
Yes, but I doubt her feature was shot in one take. It's nearly impossible to shoot a feature length film in two days--even if you pulled two all-nighters.

Creepsgirl:

The film you said was shot in two days...is that a feature? I would love to hear how you guys shot an 80+ minute movie in two days.
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My suspicion is we won't see creepsgirl again.

I’ve directed three features shot in two and a half days and
crewed on about six.

Here in Los Angeles rental houses don’t charge for Sundays. So if
we pick up the equipment at the first available time - Friday at
either 3PM or 5PM - and return it Monday at 10AM we only pay for
one day rental.

If scheduled properly you can use up to four locations - I usually
try for two or three - and with a good crew can get 30 to 40 set
ups in a 16 hour day.

My schedule is usually a 6PM call at location one. I have a walk
around dinner ready and we are set up for the first shot by 7:30.

We’ll shoot for nine hours, getting between 12 and 18 set ups.

Saturdays call is noon and we shoot until 4AM. Then depending on
where we are on the shot list we’ll adjust the Sunday call time.
Knowing that we will shoot all night with the crew packing up no
later than 8:30AM.

So if all is going well the Sunday call will be 4:00 or 5:00PM.
Sometimes The Sunday call is a brutal 12 Noon (only an eight hour
turnaround) which makes a 20 hour last day.

If I think I might need a 20 hour day I’ll schedule that on
Saturday (11AM call), try to get a 10 hour turnaround which means
a 5PM call for a 16 hour last day.

With that schedule I can get about 100 set ups. Knowing that I’ll
likely get 80 I work on my shot list with that understanding. I
can do a couple of fight scenes and some blood efx, but mostly a
movie shot like that is going to be horror with little gore or a
thriller that relies on the psychological rather than on the
action.

Over the years I’ve learned to grab inserts, sneak in additional
close-ups quickly and do some ADR right on location to make the
movie a little better.

But I have no idea how you can make a feature for less than $100.
 
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Yowzers Rik...that's a brutal shoot schedule. I can see now that it's possible to shoot a feature in a weekend...but that's barring that everyone knows exactly what they are doing, and are skilled enough to know how to make it work.

The only thing we've completed on a weekend is a 48hr competition (One of the days being for post usually), but still...we are only creating a 6-8 minute movie. Shooting a usable 80 minutes worth of footage for a feature...well that's just crazy talk. There's only so many hours in a day.

Now you Rik...you've worked on 8 features shot in two days? That's insane. How is the quality on these pictures? I can only imagine how much is going to be compromised. The amount of coverage and setups are probably drastically reduced...the editing room must be a nightmare sequence.

100 setups in two days...wow. On our best days (12 hoursish) we can charge through something like 14 pages...and we are a tight crew. Now let's say we did an overnigher...that would double (if we didn't slow down from fatigue) to 28 pages...then add another day and that's not even 70 pages yet. Doing 80+ pages in two days seems like insanity...I wasn't aware people even tried to do that (or could if they tried)...but you have done 8 of these.

Wow.

Didn't Creepgirl say she did it in one shot? lol. That adds to the insanity. I have friends that shot a 7 minute 48hr deal in one shot...but a feature? lol.
 
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It will probably be out on dvd i'd imagine which is funny because, another film similar to this called zombie diaries which was another tacky shot on a £200 camcorder zombie movie was out in stores for £10 and silly me i bought it back then but the funny thing is that movies like Transformers, The Dark knight, are around the same price and obviously much more effort and about 1000 times more money went into the later mentioned
 
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I was talking with some people about this film the other day - an interesting thing to think about....

The entry fee to Cannes is way more than $70 - I know that's not a production cost, but I just found it amusing.
 
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what is the cost of collaboration? it can be done cheaply if you can get the right Team together. I want to make a film (feature) here in the UK.....just can't get the people together! and for sure it would cost a bit more than $70......any good Brit organisations out there!!
 
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Making it!

robin-writer said:
what is the cost of collaboration? it can be done cheaply if you can get the right Team together. I want to make a film (feature) here in the UK.....just can't get the people together! and for sure it would cost a bit more than $70......any good Brit organisations out there!! ... todays world the only way to get into the biz, is make your film yourself!.........agents etc have all the excuses why they won't read Scripts so bypass them......TEAM UP ......payday is on the quality of the finished Article.
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