Micro-Budget Movie Workflows

The ability to turn a screen play into a viable movie for pocket change is only possible if you understand the whole process; or if you can find someone to work with who understands the whole process. For those of you who already have some knowledge of film production today’s piece is about why planning post is so important; but, for any screenwriters who are thinking about making their own films, I hope this short rant will help you realize why you need, in the first place, to work with someone with professional production experience.

This week I’ve been immersed in DV Rebel by Stu Maschwitz. A book I’d recommend to any micro-budget film maker, whether you’re interested in action movies or not.

The reason I recommend it, is because Stu has a pretty unique view on post production workflows and how they relate to both production and budgets.

Where Stu nails it, is by recognizing that you need to know how you’re going to complete your post production process, before you even start thinking about shooting.

Over the years, I’ve seen poverty driven film makers take a step by step approach to micro-budget film making, where the entire project becomes trouble shooting the problems caused by previous decisions; decisions often taken in ignorance.

Basically, if a film-maker writes a script, then works out how to shoot it, then works out how to edit it, then figures out how they’ll do their online and then figures out how they’re going to sell the movie… well, three things will happen: firstly, they’ll get to the end of the process and discover they should have used a different camera, secondly, they’ll go 300% over budget and thirdly, they’ll probably never sell the movie.

One of the difficulties for the micro-budget film maker is the incredible pace of change in this industry. The digital revolution is evolving at such an incredible rate, it’s almost impossible to keep pace with the changes… and, every time there is a new development the potential workflow changes with it. I mean, I’ve been at this pretty much full time for eleven years now and I still learn something new, nearly every day.

There are two things I would suggest to any film maker attempting to make a great movie on a lo/no budget.

The first thing I would suggest is to use hardware technology that is at least a year or two behind the cutting edge, but at the same time use the very latest software you can put your hands on.

One of the myriad mistakes we made on “No Place” was filming on the first generation of a particular camera. As the project progressed, that one decision cost us more in time and money than any other. This was partly caused by a glitch in the camera’s construction, which we effectively beta tested for the manufacturer… and then by the fact that in this industry software tends to lag behind hardware. I’ve seen any number of projects where the post production workflow was devastated because the “new” camera in question, was running a codec that the editing software couldn’t cope with.

What this means is, when making a camera decision, it’s best to go with a camera whose technology is at least a year old. By which point all the work flow issues of getting it into your NLE and out in decent shape, have all been hammered out by other people. People with budgets.

If any one thing will destroy your budget, in my experience, post production workflow problems will be the one.

By going with an older camera and the latest software, chances are that all the nasty glitches and potential foul ups will already have been discovered and dealt with. Plus, by waiting, there will be a whole army of people out there, whose experience you can draw on to get you out of a jam. Mainly because they had to figure out for themselves how to get out of that particular mess.

The other thing I’d recommend is this: once you’ve made a decision about how you’re going to make your film, which camera, which editing system, how you are going to online and master… at that point make a short film which tests out any procedures you’ll need for your film and physically test your workflow.

The truth is, nothing ever teaches you as much or flags up potential problems as making something.

For the $1000 movie, James and I still haven’t settled on a workflow. This is mainly because we’re still digesting the full ramifications of Stu’s book. My current guess is we’ll be shooting on some form of HD, that we’ll edit in FCP and online in After Effects. But, as I said before, things in the digital revolution change on a daily basis… in truth, goodness knows how we’ll end up doing things.