Make Your First Movie with $582 and, No Previous Experience
June 26, 2008 by clive
If you’ve never made a feature film before, then it probably seems impossible that someone with absolutely no experience of making a film, could make their very first feature film, without any training apart from the tutorial, that I’ve attached in this post and with a budget of $582… especially when I tell you, that the budget includes all the equipment you’re going to need to both shoot and edit your movie.
In this article, I’m going to assume that you don’t own any film making equipment; that you don’t know anything about film making; and that you have absolutely no idea how to either shoot or edit a movie. By the end of this piece, you’ll know what equipment to buy, how to use it to make your film… not only that, all the techniques are so simple that an eight year old could do this.
The only thing I’m not going to provide is the script.
Before I get into the actual, how this gets done, I want to take a moment to talk about why anyone would do this…
Well, here are two good reasons… I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have an idea for a movie. But, for most people, that’s as far as it ever goes. One good reason to do this, is creating your own feature film is an incredibly fun thing to do… and, in a couple of weeks time, when you go into work and people ask you what you did last weekend, instead of saying “Oh, nothing much,” you’ll be able to say… “Oh, I made a movie.” There is also another reason… let’s say that you’re an undiscovered screenwriter. You write scripts. But, because this is a brutal business, that is tough to break into, up to now those scripts have been gathering dust in files on your hard drive. As a screenwriter myself, I know how that feels… to put in all that work, but never feel like your career is making any progress. What I’m giving you here, is a technique to actually test your script, by turning it into a film, but in way that doesn’t involve you devoting your entire life to learning the technical aspects of film making.
Oh, and if you’re not a screenwriter and don’t know how to write a script, here’s an article on how to write a movie in seven days.
The first thing you are going to need to do is buy some equipment. The great news is, the equipment can be used more than once, so your second feature film is only going to cost you $150… or, you can buy this stuff, make your movie and then resell it on ebay (hey, you might even turn a profit… not many filmmakers can say that, even in Hollywood)
This is the equipment you should buy:
1) A secondhand G4 ibook… this is an Apple Mac laptop and you can get them on ebay for $292, or less
It needs to be a G4 and not a G3… and it needs to be a laptop. The reason you’re buying the Apple G4, is because they are cheap, they work… and more importantly than that, every Apple Laptop comes with a free copy of a program called imovie… and imovie is the key to making a film for under $600. The reason you’re buying a laptop and not a cheaper minimac, is because this needs to be both portable and battery powered.
2) An Agent V3 Webcam for $140 (and before anyone asks, no we’re not making any commission from this recommendation!)
The Agent V3 Webcam is a remarkable piece of kit… (for the pixel geeks out there, it takes a 1280×960 image at 30 frames a second.. yeah, you heard me, HD capture for $140!). In layman’s terms, this webcam can create images as good as any $600 HD camcorder and that’s a good thing. In theory you could make your movie with any old webcam… but the truth is, cheap webcams create really, really bad images and I figure it’s worth $140 to be sure that you’re going to get decent images.
3) … well, there is no number three. The truth is, all you need to make a movie is a cheap apple laptop, a $140 webcam, some friends and a script.
Now, if you’ve got your script… and you’ve got your equipment, you’re almost ready to make your first movie.
When you’ve got both your webcam and your laptop, the first thing you need to do is plug the USB cable of the webcam into the laptop. The second you do this, you’ve transformed this cheapo laptop into a combined video camera and editing system… or in other words, everything you need to make your first movie.
Now, go into the applications folder and click on “imovie hd” … bingo, you’re ready to start filming.
But before you do that, I suggest you first watch this short video… which shows you how easy it is to film with this set up.
(INSERT VIDEO)
Do you see how simple that was!
In terms of making your movie, I’m going to suggest that before you try anything too fancy, that you simply set up one shot for each scene in your film. In the industry this is called the “master shot.” At this stage, don’t worry about close ups, or trying to do anything clever, pick one camera position where the audience can see all the action in your scene and then record that one shot.
If you record one shot, for one scene, you can probably record an entire feature film in two, three or at the most four days (basically two weekends)… especially if you don’t get hung up on lighting the scenes and just work with the light you’ve got.
Now, in your budget, I’ve allowed $100 for food and $50 for props… which is going to get you a fair amount of pizza, beer and toy guns to play with.
And that’s the whole point of this exercise… write a script, get some friends, act it out, record it and quickly turn it into a movie… and it’s something you and your mates can do, easily and cheaply.
However, there is more to this than meets the eye. The truth is, if you make a movie like this, your first attempt is going to be pretty bad… because a movie made of just master shots is tough to watch. Most films create a new shot every second or two seconds… you’re bringing that down to one edit a minute. To make it work the acting is going to have to be compelling…!
There are also a lot of limitations… of which the biggest is actually the sound recording… as you saw on the tutorial, the microphone on the laptop isn’t ideal for recording sound away from the laptop. So, your sound isn’t going to be great.
But, at the same time, this kind of film making grows as you grow… the truth is, with a little additional equipment, it’s possible to take the next step and to start to make films you could actually show to people.
For screenwriters it’s a way to see your film played out… to take a step into film making without all the daunting nonsense that usually comes with film making… and as the ibook is a really great laptop for writing on as well, it’s not that much of an investment.
Personally, I don’t see why anyone couldn’t just do this for fun… but, the deeper truth is, that if you really knew what you were doing, you could actually make a proper movie this way… add in some photofloods, a tripod and decent microphone… and then we’re talking about a whole other league of film making.
This is probably one of the best posts on filmmaking I’ve ever read. Hilarious little video there, Clive! Wow. I can’t believe how simple that is! We did do one shoot where my camera was plugged into a laptop doing a straight record… it’s great as far as limiting tape costs, but I never thought of making a movie like that to test a screenplay! I might even try something similar, though I can do it with no budget because I already have the laptop and camera (and lights!)… though I may have to pay for a longer wire to get some close-ups, doh.
Thanks so much!
Clive, I like ideas like this, because anything that encourages and enables someone to do something which they thought they couldn’t do is a good thing. It helps to break the deadlock from thinking about making a film to actually being in production, and seeing your script idea come to life (which is very rewarding). Sometimes, you feel that making a feature is such a big thing to want to do, it’s almost like a moonshot (which only governments can do!). By taking away the possible financial worry of film making to this extreme degree, you have to ask yourself: is there anything else which is stopping me from making a movie this weekend? If not, go for it! I was, however, surprised to see in the current ‘Computer Active’ magazine (a UK publication) the short review of one of those small and increasingly inexpensive memory card camcorders. This costs £140 (not a $140), but since most people already have a desktop, they wouldn’t need to buy the laptop as they would with the webcam proposal. I don’t know what the image quality is like but I imagine it is at least as good as the webcam, probably better (and the lens is a zoom). You also have normal sound recording. I feel that if you did make a movie with the webcam, you’d probably want to make your next movie on something else, whereas this is more like a “proper” camera, so you could probably do a few informal movies with it (spread the cost over more than one project) and not feel that you were letting yourself down. The camera in question is a Toshiba Camileo Pro HD, which shoots 1280 x 720. It has a small internal drive, but this only allows you to shoot a short amount of footage, so you will need to get an SD memory card. An 8 GB card will cost you an extra £25 or so, but for that you have a mobile camera not a tethered camera, and the camcorder also doubles up as a 5 mgp still camera (you might use it for publicity photos). Just my two penny worth; I don’t own this camera so I can’t say anything useful about it, but thought I’d throw the suggestion in that it might be a more suitable starting point at a similarly low investment.
Oddly enough, I’ve just bought a camera just like that, the Sanyo Xacti. There is also a cheaper version.. the Flip.
I was planning a piece on usages of these cheap Mpeg4 cameras in the not too distant future.