Randance: Bill Martell - Do It Yourself

Martell - Do it Yourself

Time: 1:00 pmMaking your own film? Writing for a niche market? Writing a web series? This class covers everything you need to know – from Central Locations to Confined Cameos to Robert Rodriguez’s school bus. Learn how Indie films challenge the audience, writing for a budget, writing for non-actors, and getting the most production value out of your budget.

Make a list of all you accessories start with what you have and then write the script based around for what you can get.

if your whole script is what your hoping to find will be very difficult.

think of all the cool things you have access to (will be more than u expect)

where can I shoot something? What locations do I know?

On your list of things, its not only what you have but its what you can get hold of, or things that you can make.

Making a high quality film coms down to two things, time & money

Mentions poker scene in one of his movies – (which one?)

If you shoot your own movie you need to learn how to land on your feet when something goes wrong

If your dealing with your friends time – eventually they are going to get fed up and run out of time.

If you figure the script, scenes, before you film….

Make a list of things and base your film around that.

All dogs have the same amount of energy, no matter what its size - All films need to be entertaining

Great acting, great story that’s compelling that’s interesting n emotional, still have an evolving story that has plots and can surprise us – this doesnt cost money creativity is free.

When it comes down to cgi and special effects –

Think about planning in advance

You can find a way of doing things and putting them on your list.

When you have no money, time is money, so get rid of wasted time. If you have all your own equipment – wasting time is all your friends is asking so when are we going to make this film?

Minimize the number of times a film crew is packing and unpacking their truck.

If your writing something and decide your going to shoot it yourself and your going to shoot it on weekends, you want to decide locations for each weekend your going to shoot so you minimize wasting time by moving crew.

The best thing about your location is you want to find a place where conflict can erupt. If you can find a place where the good guys and bad guys turn up.

Different time periods can break up scenes from the same location.

With secondary locations because you want to veltalate the script, take the story open it up.

You gotta have enough light if your shooting at night time

Confined cameo – take this one star/character shoot him in a location for a day or two (if your lucky) and run him through the whole movie – a nice trick

Find a market out there that is not being served by Hollywood –

Everything comes in circles…

If you have a straight drama its hard to sell it, but if you have a drama that has a political background or an additional background to an audience that Hollywood isn’t serving, there will always be an audience.

Sometimes limiting your locations becomes your accidental friend

There are Locaitons you may not be aware of. Sometimes there are things you would like to shoot at this place, track it down and find out if you can rent it.

Number of days you want to shoot- backwards thinking – if I can rent equipment for 2 weeks, I will shoot for two weeks, if your doing a program to get your funding and you only get half the money you wanted – only shoot for half the money you get.

Sometimes you have to re-write a script if you are too limited to a situation. i.e if you cant get snow, don’t waste money on tons of fake snow.

Be prepared – you can always experiment on set – but be prepared before you get out there because it costs no money to prepare but time is money on set.

Limit the number of rooms in a mansion, for example. – saves money and time. If your going to shoot a flat that has a million rooms, you may pick two of those rooms to shoot everything in and light those rooms.

Contrast between locations, if your shooting everything outside, you may find some place that’s like under a tree or a in hut that gives a different texture to what the outside is.

If you are going for a story where people are trapped (clostrophia) you don’t want to go outside… you have the people trapped inside the house/room. We’re focusing the story on whats inside the house. If somebody sees something outside and shouts there are a million zombies – you will need to show a million zombies.

Two things may not know of:

1.     often affordable stock footage you can get for your movie. Go online and cruise through stock footage. – in la there are two channels that always show car chases on the news and forest fires on the news. All in HD. News footage and stock footage. Things that are production value – we can afford to do it but is there footage out there we can get cheap? There is something out there that somebody shot that you can use. You can find any type of footage for example searching tanks going down the street. Somewhere in the world there will be footage of tanks going down the street.

2.     – he cant think of number 2

confining locations – often you can find an interesting location that you can shoot in that either nobody knows about because you discovered it, or its inexpensive enough that you can get production out of it.

In LA the cheapest places to shoot are the government owned locations.

If theres some cheap place that you can shoot, put it in your script.

Actors:

You need to feed that

Pay for transportation

Everyone gets perks!

When your dealing with a no budget, limit the number of characters because that limits the amount of numbers to not show up!

Limit the ‘dog juice thing’. You have to make sure the characters are great, the dialogue is great, often there are things where it doesn’t make sense because its not set up/planned properly. As creators we know what the story is, but its up to us to figure out how the audience will know the story. The drama the conflict the dialogue has to be the best it can possibly be.

We want to make sure that the stuff we do have is the best.

If your story requires it to rain or to be sunny or a lightning strike – we cannot control so don’t put them in your script.

Other uncontrollable things are children and animals. You may write a dog in the scene to bark but it could end up shitting. And children will probably not do what you want them to do. Adults are difficult enough

If you shoot during the day – god lights for you. If you shoot at night – you need to make your own light.

BRING A BOUNCE BOARD

Try to illuminate the uncontrollables from the script.

If on your list you have ‘I have an amazing 5 year old actor’ then fine but if you write in a 5 year old kid then that’s just asking for trouble.

Think about if your going to have a crowd scene in a location, try to fill a smaller place with a few people it will look more crowded.

If your shooting a giant location at night, you need to light the whole location. If your going to shoot two actors talking face to face, all you need to do is light the faces. – try and find buildings that are already lit.

-       location scouting – potential to find an area where all the buildings are lit up.

A lot of independent films seems to be short.

Shooting digital - nothing matters because you can keep shooting. You shoot film, every set up, every shot is precious because it costs you money. Even if you shoot digital think of it as shooting film. No-one wants to see a 4 hour movie.

76 minutes = exactly 4 reels of film – which fit into one can of film. Two cans costs double the amount. Think short and sweet.

If a 90 minute film is okay, 90 minutes is over in a flash. If a film is 2 n half hours and its just okay, you’re thinking when is it going to end.

If we don’t have special effects we really need to concentrate and have an amazing story

You still need to have something different in your film that makes it different.

You can take your story about a guy feeling isolation and put him on the moon

When your trying to find your hook for your story – what is the thing that make your story different. There are 5 screening at raindance but I can only pick one. What is it about the film I chose? find that twist, whatever that thing is, find it out!

Try to control how your movie is described. I write a 1 page synopsis to sell my movie. The cool thing about is I get to control what is written in my publicity material.

Dog juice

Because we don’t have a giant movie star, an explosion, car chase, amazing stunt, these things have been taken away and we have to replace them to make up for this.

Pacing

Pacing is something that we can at the script stage enough things happen in our story

It is the frequency of exciting events in the story

A problem with independent movies is something happens only at the end.

If your doing a drama – there should be drama on a regular basis. That’s the fuel that’s the juice.

You have two good actors, all you have to do is set up two actors and shoot them. If its good that’s your juice.

If your writing dialogue a big problem is if you write crappy dialogue and have an amazing actor he can make it amazing.

We have to come up with an amazing line, that amazing phrase that sticks in peoples mind afterwards.

We have to work our asses off to come up with these pieces of dialogue.

“All you need is 3 great scenes and no bad ones” john ford – because those 3 great scenes deliver.

When writing your script, you should come up with 5 amazing awesome shots. Because time is money. If you can come up with 5 awsome shots people will talk about it. (Speaks about coen brothers shot in a bar going over a drunk in one of their movies – said was too cutesy)

You make a film for no money that you want people to remember

Harvest the audiences imagination: (greatest cheapest special effects)

For example using a floating cat in a room

props (cardboard cut up cat arm)

 sounds effects

when Hollywood stops doing something, we should start doing it!

Hollywood wreck (Spanish movie) is one of his fave movies. Found footage (point of view)

If your doing found footage the camera is a character.

If you can think of a stunt scene that you haven’t seen before – that’s cool (for example the film break where the character is based in the boot of a car).

I’D SAY GO OUT AND MAKE YOUR OWN MOVIE!

Don’t let equipment get in your way, don’t let it be an issue.

Content is whats key, its what is in front of the camera that is important.

You need great dialogue great situations.

There is no reason why I cant make a movie or short movie, put it on youtube and have millions of people watching it.

Email him once we made it!!!!

Kickstart or indie gogo (research?)