Crowd Funding On Mars

Crowdfunding On Mars

Most of your know what crowd funding is. For those of you who do not it is basically raising money through donations from fans and followers by using sites such as Indiegogo and Kickstarter. These sites have helped thousands of independent artist and film makers to get funds to help with their projects. Some times it is for money to start a production and others it is to cover post productions and or distribution.

I question whether or not that it was indented for what has recently happened. The producers of the cancelled series Veronica Mars, in order to make a feature length film from the series, went on kickstarter with the goal of getting a full production budget of two million dollars. Yeah, can you hear doctor Evil saying “Two Million dollars”? Most are using these sites to get anywhere between a thousand dollars up to a high end of one hundred thousand dollars. In other words well with in the budget of the average low to micro budget digital film. They gave themselves a thirty day window to hit the two million dollar mark and within three days they are well over three and a half million dollars.

This could end up being something that benefits all of us in the micro budget world or it could be a disaster. It could benefit those who use the site by the simple fact that this massive event has gotten kickstarter and indiegogo like sites a great deal of attention and those who donated to the big project may be willing to donate to other projects in the future.

Then again it could mean the start of a flood of Hollywood types who do not need this venue, but look at it as a way of funding their over blown vanity projects. Well I am one of those people that believe there is no level to low for the Hollywood elite to sink to and I see this more as a negative than a positive.

You doubt that huh?

Have you watched the independent Spirit Awards lately? It use to be a venue where little films got recognition. Where film makers made their bones. Lately it is the place where Bruce Willis hangs out to pick up chicks and free drinks.

I doubt that any of us will be able to fight this trend once it gets rolling, but we can survive it.

How do we as digital film makers manage to use Crowd funding to our advantage?

Look first to how Veronica Mars managed to pull this off.

 It was a cancelled tv series with a loyal following. (If it was Babylon 5 or Andromeda or even Heroes, I would not have written this post.) The producers of the show used this following to get the word out and then to get the cash to pour in.
The loyal following is something that has to be considered. If you are going to do well with crowd funding then you are going to need either a great product with a great trailer in hand or you are going to need a loyal and focused fan base for the project you are looking to have funded. Not all of us can have two seasons of a network series to generate press for our future crowd funding project, but we can have a active web series to generate a loyal following. We could have a series of short projects behind us that have introduced us to the world. If your work is good people will talk about it. Fans of your work will want to support you in the future if your feature length project appeals to them.

I am not much for constantly being on facebook and twitter (social media) to grow my brand name. This is very time consuming and I have always believed that if you do great work others will do the social marketing for you. I have not decided about Google Plus yet. The circles that it provides could come in handy when you have a project or wish to start a conversation with those who follow you. It may be a great place to do some branding and I get a lot of information from followers on Google plus about their projects and in return I tend to write about them and or post them on one of my blogs.

If you have a blog it is good to reserve a page for crowdfunding notices. Not just for your own, but for others who you believe in. This can be a way of giving back to the digital film making community. I admit that I have not done this, but I am going to add a page to this blog for Crowdfunding announcements. If most of us who have Blogs and websites with a decent following did this we could create an atmosphere where it would be possible for someone like me or you to launch a campaign with a fresh new project that could pull a million dollars in donations. Some of the best film makers on earth are making web series and digital shorts with no budgets. They are out there and if given the chance they could and would make amazing features. Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi and Christopher Nolan were low budget film makers who were given big breaks by the big studios. It would be great in the next great film maker was given a big break by a crowd of fans.

Please take a moment to share this post with someone. To stumble us on stumbleupon and to add me to your google plus. The next post will be part two of my interview with Travis Bain the maker of Throwback. I am a writer by nature which means that I fall into the category of being a creative type, so I have always loved learning from those who are technical in nature. Ask me about writing a script or working with actors or even the financing of a project and I am your guy, but the behind the camera aspects of film making and or editing and I am still a novice. I am learning as I go. Mr. Bain has given a great deal of insight into an area of film making where I am by no means an expert.


Okay that is it for today. See you guys soon.

Digital Feature Filmmaking With The HV20 Part1

Digital Feature Filmmaking With The HV20 Part1.

I hope that this will end up being a three part series on a feature film shot with the Canon HV20. If you are a regular reader of this blog they you know that I have my favorites and of all the consumer camcorders ever made my favorite is the HV20. This camcorder along with its big brothers the Canon HV30 and HV40 were well on their way to becoming a staple of micro budget film making and then the Dslr revolution hit. People quickly jumped ship and this camera sort of got lost in the shuffle.

I am here to remind the film maker that is just starting out that there are advantages to using a camcorder to shoot your first digital feature film.

The first and most important advantage is that it is designed to shoot video.

The Dslr cameras even with their hacks are at heart stills cameras. That is what they were designed to do. They do a great job at it and can shoot awesome video, but you have to work hard to do this.

Second there is the price. Camcorders like the HV series cost less. And can recorder for a much longer time. You can have your camera and be ready to shoot for less than three hundred dollars. And I am including extra batteries and dv tapes in that three hundred dollars.

Three and this is an important third, they are better at recording in camera sound. You can add a good mic and a sound mixer and get great sound that you will not have to sync later.
Let’s look at the production of a HV feature that was shot in Australia. This is the first part of an interview that I am conducting with the film maker.


Here is a look at the trailer for the Canon HV20 digital feature ThrowBack.

Here is the beginning of what I hope to be a three part interview with the talented film maker.


How did you pull it off and were you ever tempted to go with the crowd running head long of the Dslr cliff?

Using the HV20 for Throwback was mainly a question of economics. I had an extremely limited budget and it just made more sense to shoot with a camera and accessories that I already owned than spend thousands of dollars on a new camera, new lenses and all the add-on bits and pieces that I would've had to buy to go the DSLR route. I didn't want to hire a DSLR to shoot my film on because I believe an indie filmmaker should own their own gear. If you accidentally destroy or damage it, you only have yourself to answer to, but even beyond that, it's so incredibly helpful to have a camera with you 24 hours a day and know that if you need to go out and do reshoots or whatever, the camera's there, not rented out to someone else and unavailable. And I didn't know anyone in Cairns to borrow a DSLR from, because I was only fairly new in town, so it just made sense to shoot the movie on the camera that I'd already owned since 2007. I knew the HV20 was capable of stellar results so I wanted to push it to its absolute limits and get some amazing shots out of it, and I think we've achieved that. There are shots in the movie that aren't in the trailers which are just going to blow people away.


I kept an eye on the DSLR revolution and followed its progress, and it all looked very interesting to me, but there were other factors, besides the cost, that kind of put me off shooting on a DSLR initially. Throwback started production back in 2010, and back then, DSLRs were still plagued with problems like moire, line-skipping, poor dynamic range and rolling shutter artifacts like wobble and skew, which I hate. The HV20, on the other hand, wasn't a still camera that was being used to shoot video, it was a VIDEO camera that was designed for videographers, so it had a lot of features that you couldn't get (and still can't) on DSLRs, like zebras, a low-contrast cine mode, 3.5mm headphone and mic jacks, continuous autofocus (which I didn't use often but it was very handy for moving subjects as it's very hard to pull focus on an HV20), manual audio level controls and many others. Plus, in 2010, I kept reading horror stories about how DSLRs would overheat and break down, and because we were going to be filming in hot jungles, I knew I couldn't work with a camera like that because it would be too unreliable. And in fact, we actually shot a couple of night-time scenes on a Canon 5D MkII by firelight, because we needed the larger sensor, and all those horror stories came true because the camera kept overheating and shutting down all the time. But when I used the HV20, however, it very rarely gave me any hassles. It just made sense to use a camera that I'd already invested money in, in terms of not only the camera itself but also filters, lenses, accessories like a Hoodman LCD and so on.

Now, of course, the GH3 is here, which is probably the first stills camera designed specifically for videography, instead of a stills camera where video is an afterthought. It would've been cool to shoot on a hacked GH2, but as I mentioned, money was a big factor, and I decided that rather than spend more cash on camera gear, I should save that money and put it into something else instead, like props, costumes, road trips to cool locations and things like that. And I'm glad I did.

People look down on the HV20 now that the 7D and GH3 and so on are all dominating the indie filmmaking market, but they forget that the HV20 is still a great HD camera with excellent manual controls and, if you use a quality mic, great audio. It's basically just a cut-down XHA1, which was a great camera from Canon towards the end of the last decade. Obviously you can't achieve the same ultra-shallow depth of field on the HV20 that you can with a DSLR, but you can come close to it. On Throwback, I used numerous tricks to get my DOF as shallow as possible, including shooting wide open with a neutral density filter in daylight, and quite often zooming in slightly. As a result, you'll see shots in the movie which you would swear were shot with a DSLR, but no, they were done on the HV20 shooting a max aperture with an ND filter and a slight zoom factor. Exposure-wise, it was just a matter of letting the camera set the exposure and then dialling down the gain until I saw a pleasing image on the LCD screen. I just exposed everything by eye, and of course the zebras came in mighty handy too. I just tried not to let the highlights blow out and everything was hunky-dory. Prosumer cameras are always factory set to overexpose everything so you have to compensate for that in each shot, which is why the trailers for Throwback look like an actual movie and not home video. We also tried to avoid shooting in high-contrast situations wherever possible. Most of our filming days started at about 6am when the sun was still low in the sky and the light was soft. Magic hour. It works for Terrence Malick and it sure worked for us, too.

That is it for part one of this question and answer. Just remember we are talking about being digital feature film makers. The word digital being important. You do not need an expensive camera to shoot your micro budget film. You can do it with video camera and the price point for many of them are becoming more and more appealing. If you want to become a digital film maker go out and start shooting footage. Get use to using what ever camera you select and keep shooting. It is better to have a two hundred dollar camera or camcorder that you are familiar with rather than a two thousand dollar camera that you are afraid to touch. Digital Film making is about having fun, if you are not enjoying yourself then you are doing something wrong. You can do it with an iphone, a Sanyo, a 8mm camera, a Vixia Camcorder, a Dslr or a Red one.
Good luck guys. Please take a moment to share this post with a friend.

Digital Film Making, The Content Gap

Digital Film Making, The Content Gap

I have not posted for the last months because I have been debating whether or not to continue to be encouraging at all cost.

Digital filmmaking has reached a turning point. Understand that I look at five
to ten short films a day. I love content. I love to be surprised by a good new film maker that I have been introduced to for the first time. This use to happen once a week, now I am lucky if it happens once a month. The availability of low cost equipment such as the dslr cameras has allowed anyone and everyone with a motion picture dream to produce content. The problem is that so much of this content is not worth the time that it takes to watch it and I am one of those people who has to finish everything even when I know that it is not going to be worth the trip.

There is tons of new content out there. Most of this new content is just taking up online space. Too many people, some of you, have rushed out to make a short film or even a feature without thinking it through. Many without even bothering to write a script. I assume that they are hoping that by accident or because of their overwhelming natural talent they will produce a masterpiece. It doesn’t happen that way. Never has and probably never will.

Content and quality are different things. Everyone with a video camera can produce content. The quality of which is the problem. Please go back to the basics before you yell action. This low budget digital film is going to have your name on it forever. I repeat forever.

This is going to be a basic overview of what is need to produce quality content for all of us out here in the viewing world to enjoy.

First, Write a good script. Write one that is visual. If you are going to shoot a film where everyone is a talking head why not just pick up a play by Shakespeare and shoot that. Otherwise try to keep in mind that movies are visual. What we see is more important than what we hear. In the last Batman movie there was a villain that many complained about. We can not understand what he is saying many said. The characters diction and pronunciation was spot on. The problem was that we as an audience could not see his mouth move behind that mask and there was a split second from when he started speaking and we detected it so we lost the first word or two of his speech.


Show do not tell is the key to making your film more visual. Work on using action and movement to tell the story rather than dialogue.

Next, Lights are important. I realize that The Godfather is a dark film visually. Sometimes the DP used two lights instead of three to achieve a mood. He was a master of the rules before he decided when and where to break them. Light is your friend. Three point lighting is going to be your best friend. If a shot is to brightly lit you can reduce it in post editing. If it is too dark there is nothing that you can do to solve this problem, but go back an shoot it again. There are too many movies been shoot with little or no understanding of lighting. Here is my lighting advice. Go set up your lighting kit, what every it is. Clamp lights or work lights or what every you have. Then go and get a bi plain white party balloon, draw a face on it and practice lighting it from different angles. Study how the lights form different shadows at different angles and absorb this. Learn how each and every possible lighting set up will affect each shot.


 Next, acting is important. Hiring your friends and family to star in your epic is not a good option. If they are all you got then rehearse them to death. Acting on film boils down to four basic steps. Go over these steps like a basic dance. They are ;

1. Learn what to say.

2. Learn where to Stand.

3. Stand there.

4. Say those lines and mean them. Or do that action and mean it.

Over and over and over again like a dog learning to do a rolling over trick so that they can do it every single time they are told as if on auto pilot. Sounds harsh? Sounds brutal? You are a director and being harsh is part of the job that you have signed up for. Good actors or great actors do not require being drilled or rehearsed, they know how to do the job and they will be a joy to work with, but what are family and friends for if not to be brutalized in the name of completing your micro budget film.

Making a movie is like winning a prize fight you are going to have to get mean and nasty and brutal sometimes to get the job done well.

Last note. Look at great films. Watch them and study them scene by scene. That is after all how movies are constructed one scene upon another. Scenes form sequences and sequences form acts and acts form films. Watch how on some level the scenes in great movies connect. They build a rhythm like a song. That is how good content is produced. Work on the little things and the big thing that is a finish quality piece of content that we can all watch and enjoy will happen.  Here is a scene from one of my favorite and perhaps the most underrated western ever made. The final showdown at the end of the film Keoma.


Good luck with your digital films. Please take a moment to share this post with a friend.

The Year Of The GH3

            The Year of The GH3

    The Panasonic GH3 is perhaps the camera many of us have been waiting for. The kind of dslr that can get the job done right out of the box. I know that many will say that this camera already exist and that it is named the Canon 5d mark III. Sur it is, but the price difference is almost two thousand dollars and to some of us two thousand dollars is the budget of our micro budget film.

    This camera is going to cost you between twelve to eighteen hundred dollars. I realize this is much more than the hackable Gh1 and Gh2 and the Canon T2i. If you are on a budget those cameras are great and can get your feature film shot. You can do it using some of the Canon Vixia camcorders if necessary, but there are moments when you have to stop, take a deep breath and allow yourself to dream a little.

   The Panasonic GH3 can put the low budget digital film maker on an even playing field with the big budget pros.

    Those were some solid reviews of the camera. Now here is a short film shot by the legendary Phillip Bloom using the camera.

    Okay, I would suggest that you visit some of the online sites to price the camera. See what kind of deals are available. I realize the cash investment is going to be big, but the rewards are awe inspiring. If we are going to spend money this year on a camera this is the one.

    What?

    “What if there are problems with the camera?”

    There will always be limitations to every camera. There will be patches and firmware updates and yeah probably hacks that come along, but this one is going to be with us for a long time.

    Okay that is it guys. Good luck with your film and always keep in mind that the equipment we use is not as important as learning the basics of good lighting, framing and quality sound.

Digital Filmmaking, About Paying It Forward

            Digital filmmaking, Paying it Forward

    The thing that we do not do enough of is to just pay it forward. We make our films and are so self absorbed by the process that we do not think about those who will follow us. This is truly a shame since many of us did not attend film school, but learned how to do this from books, articles and online tutorials.

    If there is some behind the scenes footage included on a dvd it is usually silly out takes and the occasional interview with a cast member. Even voiceovers done by directors are largely wasted on everything, but the technical aspects of shooting the movie. I have learned more about shooting a movie from listening to directors like William Friedkin than I have from all the film making books that I have read.

    Today I would like to introduce you to a behind the scenes look at making of a very promising micro budget film. The basic background of this movie is that it was shot using a camera that has been brushed aside too quickly in everyone’s rush to embrace the Dslr revolution. Yes I know that you can make a kick ass movie shooting with a Canon 7d or my favorite a hacked panasonic Gh1, but you can also do some great work with the Canon HV series of cameras. Not only with the addition of a depth of field adapter, but with the bare camera.

    Below is the trailer for, plus behind the scenes footage,  a great looking Canon HV 20 film. I did not think that you could get footage this good looking from just the naked HV 20. I hope in future to interview the film maker and find out what went into the production of the film Throwback.

    Okay that is about it for today. Please guys take a moment to check out their channel on youtube and remember that any advice that we can give about lighting or editing or working with a crew may help someone who is just starting out.

    Last thing for today, I would like to add a coming attractions page, but to do this I could use some coming attractions or new releases to promote. I will put up a clip along with a link to your website or page. 
Just something to think about guys.

On Filmmaking and Marketing with Ed Burns

            Filmmaking With Ed Burns

    Hollywood looks at Ed Burns as an indie filmmaker while most micro budget film makers look at him as a mainstream film maker. I look at him as a very important innovator in the world of film marketing.

    Ed was one of the first film makers to understand that the business aspect of the film making process was important. He seems to have figured out early on that if you do not make a profit with your film then those responsible for financing them would not take you seriously.

    Some of you are probably saying, but I have a intimate little micro budget film that must be made and I do not care whether or not it ever makes a dollar. Fine, there are many film makers like this. If you are in it for the one time shot then go ahead and save your money and go out and shoot it over how ever many weeks and or months it takes to get the job done. Hey it took Christopher Nolan about a year of shooting on weekends to finish his first feature. Make your film your way, but if you want to earn a living at this, if you want to make any more films then the business side of things is going to have to be considered.


    Ed Burns is a good film maker. He is at times a very good screenwriter, but his lasting impact will be showing us how to monetize our project through itunes and video on demand. The marketing of your film should be a part of your pre production planning and a major part of post. This is important because this is how we will earn our living as a indie filmmaker. I know that some of you think that you will make your film and find a distributor to handle the financial end of things and maybe there will be a few of your who manage to pull that off, but have you heard the thousands of horror stories about distributors who have cheated low budget film makers out of their profits. If you learn to market your film then you will be in control of the money.

    Okay that is it for today. Good luck with your projects and I am still looking for guess bloggers. If you have a production story that you wish to tell and you can do it in under a thousand words I would love to post it. Look at it as a way of advertising your project.

The Greatest Independent Filmmaker

            The Greatest Independent Filmmaker

    Some of you will disagree strongly with this statement. I will make it anyway.

    Alfred Hitchcock was not only the greatest filmmaker of the 20th century, but he was the greatest indie filmmaker as well.

   “He worked for studios all of his life. He made the most hated of all types of films to the old world of indie film makers. He made the kind of films that made money. You can’t call that guy an indie film maker.”

   I can and I will.

    Look at it this way, in the world that Hitchcock lived in there was no way that you could be a truly indie filmmaker. The only one who tried it was Orson Welles and he got crushed by the studios. Movies cost a fortune to produce. The only way to distribute them was through the studios and the theaters that they owned and operated. Tv did not exist when he started his career. There was no dvds, no videos, no digital downloads, no internet. He had to work within the system and take his shots when he could.


   In England he had some control near the end of his time making movies there. Arriving in America he was employed by David O Selznick, a hyper control freak who had no problem with re-editing Hitckcock’s films. Some would argue that he re-edited Rebecca into winning best picture. I would argue that it was probably a best picture winner before he touched it and if it had lost Hitchcock would have won with the first of his truly indie productions in America the film Foreign Correspondent.    

   When not working for Selznick his contract was loaned out to other studios. This gave Hitchcock the freedom to do within reason what ever films that he wished to. This allowed him to make the movie that would be his favorite, Shadow Of A Doubt. He took a movie star and turned him into a serial killer before most of the world had any idea of what a serial killer was.

   A few years later Hitchcock would gain his total independence and form his own production company. This did not last long due to the fact that he wanted to be a little too experimental. He made the movie Rope that was shot in ten minute takes. Easy to do now, but a nightmare to do back in the forties. At the turn of the 1950s he was back working for the studios with a new respect for what they could provide and also what it took to make truly independent films. He would spend the next ten years making a few movie for fun and profit and then others for himself. This cycle would allow him to give the studios what they wanted. Massive hits like Strangers on a Train, The Man Who Knew Too Much and the Blockbuster North By Northwest.
His indie type on movies were almost as successful. Movies like The Trouble With Harry, I Confess, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder and Vertigo.

   If nothing I have offered has gotten through and you still think Hitchcock was only a big studio director and nothing more please explain Psycho.

    He took a tv crew to shoot a movie. He shot it in six weeks. He shot it in black and white. He used mostly his own money. He took a movie star and killed her a third of the way into the movie. He was the most famous director on earth. Famous for elegant thrillers with Grant and Stewart and Grace Kelly. Nearing the age of sixty he hammered the film going world with a dark and bloody little thriller that despite hundreds of attempts no one has been able to come close to repeating during the last 50 years.

    And he followed that one up by spending a year working on and shooting The Birds.

    Hitchcock could have relaxed. He could have settled into doing the same movie over and over again, but instead he was always stretching and straining to do what had never been done before.

    Indie stands for independent. Doing it your way is what will make or break your indie film. Right now there is a film festival in my city. Except for the Graveyard shift (horror and action from around the world) there is not much independence of thought on display. Do not think about festivals or awards when making your film. Do not think about anything, but what will please you and the audience that you have in mind. This is why Hitchcock’s films have endured the test of time.

    Are their filmmakers today who work within a studio system and still managed to maintain their independence? Have a look at the films of the great foreign filmmaker Takashi Miike. Izo, Zebraman, One Missed Call, The Happiness Of the Katakuris, The 13 Assassins, Audition and Ichi the Killer. He has done a dozen more I could name.

    This post has strictly been my opinion.

    Okay that is it for today. The next post is going to most likely be about Found Footage. I know that we have talked about this subject before, but it has become a Genre that is almost strictly part of the horror film world and I think that it is time to grow the genre.

    Thank you for visiting and I am still looking for my first guest Blog post. If I could pick the subject it would be editing. That is my weakness and it must be someone’s strength.

    Okay good luck and good bye for now.