What is an Independent Film? and Five Things to Know When Working On an Independant Film

"Independent Film" is a term you hear a lot these days. With cameras getting better and cheaper, it's no wonder. A six year old with a camera phone might consider himself an Indy Filmmaker, so before getting into the meat and potatoes of this post, I want to establish what I find to be a working definition of "Independent film"

An Independent Film is a a production shot on a shoe string budget, with a bare bones crew, and unconventional methods. Obviously there is more to it then that, however, many of the films you see in blockbuster, or on TV, are shot in this way. I know, it sounds crazy, but it's true. Furthermore, you don't need big Hollywood backing to make a decent movie; which brings me to the next part of this blog.

Five Things to Know When Working on an Independent Film

1. Make sure your script is good. There are several books on screen writing, Save the Cat by Blake Snyder being one of the best. He gives you a simply, and easy to follow format to work with, and if you follow his methods, no matter how silly your story idea, it will be entertaining. Check out the link, and you'll see what I mean.
2. SHOW Respect/ Appreciation for Your Actors and Crew. I emphasize show because many times people say, while they continue to abuse thier crew. On an independent film shoot, many people are working for low or no pay, simply because they like making films. Knowing this, the least you can do is feed your crew well, thank them for thier hard work, and not make them feel like slave labourers. This applies to Directors, Producers, Writers, and even fellow actors and crew in some cases. I worked with a Director who paid nobody, but he had the right attitude, and fed us well, and every person continues to come back and work for him.
3. Make and Stick to a Production Schedule. Without a schedule, it's very difficult to get everyone in the right place at the right time. It also makes it more difficult to keep track of what you've done, and still need to do. When making your schedule, considered that many of your actors and crew are working other jobs to pay thier bills, and that 10 days of shooting, is very tiring. Work in a few days of down time between shoot days, you'll be happy you did.
4. Lighting and Audio are the Unseen Heros of Production. Whether your working with clamp lights and a memo recorder, or $10,000 worth of lighting/sound equipment, make sure you use it properly. Studies have shown that people will watch a movie with bad images if the sound is good. The better the recording is during the shoot, the easier it will be to work with in post production. Light your scenes. Even if it's adding three little lights in your apartment, adding lighting to your film increases production value, which makes your film look better. This brings me to my last point:
5. Have Value for Your Production. Do the most with what tools you have at hand. I worked on a film where production value actually went down over the course of a shoot. It's disheartening for the crew and actors, and no one wants to watch a film that falls apart as it proceeds forward. As the saying goes, "people will give you the same value you give yourself"... or something like that, but you get my point.

Obviously there is a lot more to making a movie, but in my experience these five factors can play a huge roll in the final product. However, I'm always learning new things. The more productions I work on, the more I learn, and the more this list develops. That being said, I'd like to open this conversation up to all you lovely folks on the interweb.

Add to the list, or subtract from the list. Agree/disagree with me in a comment down below. I'm curious what you all think.

Music from the Original Motion Picture

I've loved motion picture soundtracks since I saw the Crow. I must had three copies of that cassette growing up, because I played it so much I had to keep buying new ones. I have many favorite movie soundtracks in my possession, but recently I've been into Eric Clapton's work in the 80's.

For Lethal Weapon 3 Clapton teamed up with Sting and made the awesome track, It's Probably Me.

This is a bad ass song, and it came from an awesome movie.

Clonehunter

While reading Andrew Bellware's blog, I have come to learn that Clonehunter is now available for preorder on Amazon.com. It's pretty cool because I cut the trailer for the american distribution of the film.

Drop Frame

While at my buddy's study yesterday, he mentioned that most of the editors dropping work off for audio mixing don't know a thing about drop- frame timecode.

I've heard of it, but being that I couldn't give a definition of it, I decided to do some research. After about 5 articles, I get it. It's facinating stuff. The idea that someone developed a program to automatically compensate for the .03 second lost when shooting in 29.97fps, so realtime syncs with timecode is pretty cool.

It's interesting how the standards for video production change with the creation of new technology. Drop frame only came about when TV started shooting in color. It took slightly longer for color information to be processed by TVs so the frame rates of video/film were shortened from 30fps to 29.97 to compensate. Pretty cool

Bococa Arts Festival

Last night kicked off the start of the Bococa Arts Festival. I was there, camera clad, to start shooting some footage a proposed documentary following the festival. After the experience, a few things came to mind.

Unconventional performance locations are difficult to film in. The lighting sucks, it's crowded, loud, and hard to move around in.

My shoulder mount was a little too big, bulky and heavy last night, a disappointing realization, I must say. Today I'm removing the shoulder pad and fore grip, so I'm going to stick the basic rail system on my monopod and run around like that.

I would love to have a bunch of lenses that were 1.8 or faster. The sigma lens I got performed well, but as the sun went down, it really became too dark in the bar, so I had to bump up to higher ISO speeds, making for a noisy picture. At one point, I swapped lenses for my Canon EF 50mm with the f/1.8, and man it was super sweet. I shot at slower ISOs, got some great shallow depth of field, did some rack focusing, it was a blast. The only down side, is that in a small bar, you'll only get two members of the band in a shot at that focal length. I'll figure it out.

The Last 3 Minutes

This is one of the short films used for test purposes during the Zacuto shoot out. I liked it so much, I wanted to give it a seperate post. It was shot on the Canon 5D.

"The Last 3 Minutes" Directed by Po Chan from Shane Hurlbut, ASC on Vimeo.

The Great DSLR Shoot Out

While looking through Philip Blooms website, I stumbled upon the Zacuto Camera Shoot Out. Basically they grabbed a bunch of experts, DPs, Editors, Colorists, and Directors, and took all of the top DSLR cameras, the Canon line up, a Nikon 3Ds, Panasonic GH1, as well as Fuji and Kodak Film cameras and put them through a bunch of tests to see how they perform.

The Fuji and Kodak film cameras were used primarily for comparison, however, they prove to have some short comings compared to the DSLRs, mainly in low light, and high ISO speeds. Despite the gratuitous use of technical terms, it's easy to understand how things stack up throughout this hour and a half series. *spoiler alert: the short comings of the DSLR cameras seems to consistantly be a loss of detail in highlighted areas, however, many of the experts agree, "if you know this, you can plan your shoot accordingly".

The end conclusion, digital technology is still no match for the tried and true film cameras, however, that wont last long. The footage taken from these cameras is sooo close to looking like film today, that it will only be a few years before technology will advance to where the DSLR may replace the film camera.
Check out the tests, they really put this cameras through the rigors