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Making Low-Budget Movies?
strider3700 asks: "One of my favorite shows was cancelled today and it's left me feeling rather bitter towards the mainstream. I tend to like shows more intelligent then 'Survivor' but I'm in the minority so shows won't be made to pick up that small percentage. However now and again I find great video clips on the net. They appear to be homemade and are in some cases very well done. Is it possible to do something like this for a continuing series and place it on the net to share? how would someone go about doing something like this? And I know not to quit my day job."
They cancelled "Golden Girls" a long time ago. I'm still upset.
I wouldnt continue a previous copyrighted work. Might not be healthy...when the studio shows up with a tank.
-- Insert wisdom here:
Make Movies
There's a low budget, professional looking, star wars video here
If you visit the site you will find out what they did, what software to use, and general tips to make a movie.
Anyway, the important thing is not the technology, but the history you are trying to tell.
(I'm glad you didn't ask how to get profit, though)
Kilroy was here!
Here's the problem. When movie makers (even indies) talk about "low budget", they mean "under one million dollars".
Even the cheapest, crappiers, simplest, no-staff, no-nothing movies require high-roller investers to bank you. Anything less than $250,000 is going to look like you shot it with your high-8 during junior-high A/V class.
If you are in the U.S. (I'm assuming you are), go to a public TV station and ask what it takes to produce a show for them (Usually they will provide equipement you can use in their studio for production).
A few suggestions: buy a nice video camera if you plan to produce a show outside their studio. If you want something with your own homebrew FX, buy a nice video card with TV-in/out functions.
Which was...? Hell, I don't even know what day you refer to by "today".
Look at the success of Troops. Granted there hasn't been another one made, but while this falls under the parody aspect, creating something within a genre doesn't have to be a parody, and if well done can actually gain the blessing of the original creator. I remember I was one of the luck few at DragonCon 1998(?) where they debuted a film short made by an Australian troup depicting the delivery of the Death Star plans into the hands of the Alliance. They focused on Mara Jade, a definite Lucas/SW copyrighted character, and were blessed by George himself. This was *not* a parody at all.
Sig? What's a Sig?
Are you sure? --AC
Remember that thing MIT did where they took videos of talking human heads and put words in their mouths, and made convincing results? Perhaps this would work to continue dead shows...I don't know if it can save cartoons (Futurama...[sob]) though.
Karma: Excellent (fuck, even in the future moderation doesn't work!)
Non Sequitur \Non seq"ui*tur\ [L., it does not follow]
n 1: a reply that has no relevance to what preceded it
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"I tend to like shows more intelligent then 'Survivor' "
But not intelligent enough to know the difference between 'then' and 'than'.
Survivor is a great show. And "than" is spelled "than."
I really couldn't understand what you are asking. We understand your motivation but little else. Are you asking how to distribute large video files on the internet? Are you asking about how to deal with the legal issues of using copyrighted characters? Are you asking for advice on video equipment? Are you asking how to make a movie?
I'm not sure any of us are going to be able to help you since it's not clear what skills you have, how much money you're willing to spend and what, specifically, you are having a problem with. And it's not at all clear to me what that sentence about Survivor has to do with anything. Why did you throw that in?
Editors: why are you accepting submissions like this? This Ask Slashdot question isn't even well posed!
GMD
watch this
Then you get crap like Bachelor which will be going into its third season.
Read a book.
I can't comment on any technical issues, having never really realized any of the crap I planned when I bought my camcorder.
However, it occurs to me that you need people to put in front of the camera and stories for them to tell. Check out your city's local theatre community and you'll probably find people to collaborate with.
I tend to like programs that run from the command line but I'm in the minority so programs won't be made to pick up that small percentage. However now and again I find great programs on the net. They appear to be homemade and are in some cases very well done. Is it possible to do something like this for several version releases and place it on the net to share? how would someone go about doing something like this? And I know not to quit my day job."
I hope my point has been made. You have a lot of research ahead of you. 20 years ago you would be making S-8 films and be limited to 1950's special effects technology. Fortunatly, today with DV cams and computer editing and efx, the tech end of it isn't the main problem. Now, your main problem in creating a show is dealing with people, unless you're making a silent puppet show. Basically, don't be and don't work with assholes, and supply good food during a shoot.
As for distribution, you'll need to hook up with companies who can afford the bandwith if your show catches on. Which can happen in just a few days. You wouldn't want to be the next Mahir or 401The Movie just to have new viewers get a "bandwith limit exceeded" message when they try to view it..
Of course the next step is ????? then Profit!
Check out So you wanna make a low-budget movie on SoYouWanna.com.
This is probably a good starting point. You should be able to find some good tips and some additonal references to check out.
I can spell. I just can't type.
"I want to reenact "Wayne's World", a al geek style. How do I do it? What programming should I have? Will you guys watch my show?
Well, will ya?
Operator, give me the number for 911!
That's just not how it works. Public TV ;though they've managed to fill out the
relys on Government money and they operate
like a beauacracy. The last thing the want
is some kid off the street coming and showing
everybody that TV production is easy. You'd actually have a much better chance with a local
cable company ISP's public access station. They
used to do this back in the "Wayne's World" glory
days;
stations with more, real stations.
Here's another article on no-budget film making.
Having been to quite a number of amateur film making festivals at sf cons, I can tell you it doesn't necessarily take money to make an enjoyable movie, but it does take time, patience, and some talent. With nearly identical budgets the films vary substantially. About 33% are unwatchable due to technical issues (sound, lighting, editing), 33% are unwatchable due to artistic issues (acting, story, pacing), and 33% are better than any SCI-FI Channel Original production ever aired. (Don't ask about the final 1%, really!)
The main ingredients are ingenuity, time and dedication. Oh, and you have to find actors who'll work for nothing. Naturally, under these circumstances acting quality can vary. Nevertheless, the film turned out OK.
One big problem he stumbled across was the cost of getting your film rated. Here (UK), you have to submit it to the British Board of Film Censors (oops, "Classification" :) who then watch it and decide on its rating. They charge about 100 UKP a minute for this "service" :)
note: Mainly posting to undo a bad moderation, but I thought I ought to contribute something relevant.
Read Rebel Without a Crew: Or How a 23-Year-Old Filmmaker With $7,000 Became a Hollywood Player by Robert Rodriguez
Guys and Dolls its almost Christmas time so lets not forget the presents that we have already given each other. There is blender ( http://www.blender3d.org )an amazing 3d modeling suit and Cinelerra ( http://heroinewarrior.com/index.php3 ) an advanced compositing and editing system like Adobe Premier yet free. On top of that there are a pethora of audio editing programs but that isn't what I deal with at the moment.
Decent video camera $1000
Motel room $50
Cheap hooker $100
Enough beer to overlook the ugly (her's or yours) $50
Bail money $500
For everything else, there's Mastercard(tm)
You have the title wrong - It's 405, not 401.
Just be careful where you host your movie, or it will become 404 - The Movie.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It seems one of your problems may be solved here:
2 33 &mode=thread&tid=95
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/18/189
What a day.
Having dabbled a little bit in amateur clay and live action films myself (never released anything yet though), I have a few suggestions on your camera and software of choice:
;p) we made a Star Wars parody complete with light sabers and explosions. We had a guy who tracks techno music with Impulse Tracker mix the sound FX (he did a freaking awesome job!), used Premiere 5 for editing, Photoshop 5 for drawing light sabers and effects frame-by-frame, and a good boom mic for the sound. I don't know how much they spent on the mic, but expect to spend a lot; I'm guessing at least $150. Our camera was only $1200, but it had progressive scan, so it really lent a film-like look to the video when it was presented on the 30 foot tall screen at an assembly in the auditorium.
MiniDV is a great format if you can't afford anything better.
Adobe Premiere, combined with The Gimp or Film Gimp, and POV-Ray can handle most of your editing and special FX needs.
Use 1394(Firewire) to transfer video! No Analog/Digital/Analog conversion crap allowed!
Expect to spend at least $800 on your camera for a barely-good-enough-for-basic-film-making model.
Make sure your camera has a progressive scan mode; it brings the feel of the video slightly closer to film, and improves computer display quality.
If you can afford it, buy a 3-CCD camera. If you've the money, a 3-CCD camera is a must-have.
Ideally, for amateur no-budget films, you'll want to spend around $3000 on your equipment and software, but that stuff should last you a long time and serve you faithfully.
Oh, don't forget a good boom mic and tripod! Way back in high school (3 years ago
Folding up the tripod and using it to carry your camera around during moving camera scenes can go a long way to making the image a lot more stable, especially if you have jittery hands from drinking too much Mt. Dew.
Thus ends this disjointed rambling.
A solution to the problem with music today
That said, here's the equipment that we use to make it happen:
- 1 Canon GL2 MiniDV camera
- a bunch of Sony digital video cameras (that's not the exact model, but close to it)
- a boom mic (I have no idea what model, but it cost around $300, I think)
- a wireless clip-on mic (again, no idea what model, but it works well)
- a bunch of G4 Tower workstations with Final Cut Pro 3 (though this is mostly because we have a ton of people doing different things all at once, you don't really need more than 1)
- a dual 1Ghz G4 Tower with 1.5GB RAM on which we (I) assemble everyone's edited footage and export to video.
The Canon camera is our high-quality camera - we use it whenever possible, as the footage quality is much better than the Sonys. Also, what is probably its greatest advantage is the additional adapter module that attaches to the bottom of it and allows mic input from the boom mic and wireless mic (which have 3-pronged plugs instead of what most of us have on our computers). It comes with dials to adjust the mic input levels and such. This allows for an exponential leap in sound quality, as good mics cut out annoying background noise like humming, hissing and other general environmental noise. Don't use the cameras' built-in mics if at all possible, as these just can't get close enough to the speaker to cut out other noise and usually aren't very high-quality anyway.We use Final Cut Pro mostly because we have the luxury of a lab full of mid- to high-end Macs, but also because it is an extremely powerful software package for what you pay for it. The only thing that really compares in that price range is Avid XpressDV, which is slightly more expensive, runs on Windows and has its own unique advantages. Some people will try to tell you to use Adobe Premiere to edit your footage, as it is less expensive than either of the two suites that I just mentioned, but I wouldn't recommend it. While I have not worked with it personally, my filmmaking/broadcasting teacher worked with it at the last school he taught at, and it gave him nothing but trouble.
Any serious video editing will require some serious hardware to handle everything smoothly. Tons of RAM (on the order of 768MB or more) is a must, and it is also desireable to get a dual processor machine (dual Athlon systems are fairly inexpensive if you're working on a tight budget and choose to go with a Windows solution). Also, make sure your machine supports FireWire. On any fairly new Mac, this is a given, and support for it is built right into OS X and has worked flawlessly for me. FireWire is pretty much the only way to do video capture well, as most, if not all, DV cameras support it and it is many times faster than USB.
The editing will take much longer than shooting any of your actual footage. Make sure to plan your time accordingly.
Also, if you want to get better image quality, see if you can find a digital video camera that uses BetaSP instead of MiniDV. They may be more expensive, but they produce a much higher image quality and consequently, look much better on NTSC monitors and TVs (I'm assuming you're in the US here).
As far as distributing your footage is concerned, I know that Final Cut Pro allows you to export the movie in several different formats suitable for online distribution, as well as printing back to tape and burning to DVD. Printing to tape is how we finalize our broadcasts, as we just hook up a camcorder, record our edited footage onto it, and then hook the camcorder up to the coax broadcasting hardware with component video cables. Beyond that, I don't have any experience. For DVD authoring, I know that Apple also sells DVD Studio Pro, which I've heard is an excellent DVD authoring tool.
I've learned so much in this past year of working with digital video that I'm sure there's tons that I'm leaving out, but I hope this is enough to give you an idea of what is required. Please feel free to respond with any more questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
--sdem
How do I get started in the amateur porn business?
A while back there was a craze for quake demo files as movies, some were great (blahbalicious, operation bayshield).
I was involved with the UK Quake Movie Project, unfortunately it was usurped by a goth with ulterious motives and it became a shoddy lovecraftian nightmare rather than a surreal comedy with cows.
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
Many universities have excellent opportunities to participate in low budget video production. Check your local campus, and keep a raincoat on.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
http://www.non-sequitur.com/
http://www.mwp.com/pages/booksdigitalfilm101.html
I don't know how you would go about it, but I can offer you some advise - don't let your work end up like this or this!
I've made a program that converts a filmstrip to either a single PNG or a sequence of PNG's. I'm going to release it on SourceForge once I've added some new features and polish. If anyone actually reads this post and wants the program before then (it already works), leave feedback for me using the form on my website, or reply to this post.
A solution to the problem with music today
is Bruce Campbell's autobiography, If Chins Could Kill. Talks about what you need to do before you actually start filming, and the huge amount of work raising the money takes