I’m in the middle of reading a couple of books on it, I’m sure I’m going to have to either take classes or do some work on other people’s projects before I try anything of my own.
I was thinking of 16mm in that post. You might get off cheaper in super-8. You’ll still get the experience, but at a little less cost (depending on what you buy). Yale Labs in North Hollywood has Ektachrome 7240 for $$40 with processing. (Industry standard film rate for larger formats is 24 frames per second in the U.S. – 25fps in Europe – and 18fps for super-8. 18fps gives you 3:20 per 50-foot roll of super-8 film, and 24fps gives you 2:30.)
Cameras are priced all over the board. There’s a top-of-the-line Beaulieu 7008 on eBay with a current bid of $1,000. There are 5008.S and 4008 cameras currently from $33 to $500. (The 4008 ZM-II is especially desirable.)
But you don’t need a Beaulieu. You should get a good camera, though. The higher-end Elmo cameras have excellent optics. Canon 1014s are very good cameras, I’m told; but their prices generally reflect it. I’ve heard good things about Nizo and Bauer cameras. Avoid at all costs Bell & Howell, Kodak, Bentley, and GAF cameras. They’re cheap consumer crap. Some of the Elmos are cheaply made too. The 612S.XL is good, as are the 1018.S and the 1000.S. Good glass. Look for a camera with a metal chassis. It will probably have good glass. You can get a good camera for under $100.
A word on Beaulieus: Mine does not accept AA batteries. It has a separate power pack. Beaulieus have rechargable batteries built into their detatchable handgrips. You might want to consider an Elmo, Canon, etc. because they use AA batteries that you can get anywhere if you run out of power.
You’ll also need a tape splicer (I’ve had good luck with the Hervic – there’s one on eBay for $5, and I think you can get the tape from Bel Air Camera in Westwood, CA), and a viewer. The Elmo 912 Editor is good, and they turn up a lot on eBay.
Of course, you’ll want to see your film. You need a projector. The Elmo ST-180E is a good one, and there’s one on eBay currently under $60.
So you’re adding all this up. $100 for a camera, say $75 for a projector, $25 for a viewer, $20 for a splicer… (depends on what the winning bids are, so these are just estimates). Or you can spend $100 for an older 16mm Bolex H16 camera with a lens and $100 for a light meter. About the same. But Yale Labs sells 16mm colour stock for $47 for 2:30 run time, plus $0.14/foot for processing, plus $0.25/foot for transferring it to video. (B&W stock is $25/roll – same prices for processing and transfer.) Yale isn’t the cheapest place around, but it’s an okay thumbnail. A Bolex H16 is a spring-motor camera. You can only shoot 25 seconds at a time. (Maybe 28.) A super-8 will run as long as you hold the trigger, until you run out of film. 16mm is bigger, heavier, and not as easy to load film into. (Not that it’s difficult at all – just more difficult than popping a cartridge in.) An H16 might have people coming up to you and asking, ‘Hey! What’s that?’ A super-8 camera might pass as a home video camera and no one will give it a second look. Super-8 cameras have automatic exposure, too. (Good if you want to concentrate on the image, bad if you want to learn how to expose film.)
But the big thing is that while the cost of equipment is about the same (if you’re looking for the lowest-price-of entry figure), the cost of film and processing is greater for 16mm. Of course 16mm film stock is easier to find and buy, and you have more choices. It also makes a better image. But for practising, either 16mm or super-8 will do the job.
The thing about proper screenplay format, of course, is that it really doesn’t matter so much if you’re making the film from the script yourself 
Practising with film is a good idea, though I’m not personally ready for that route I think, but if you get your hands on a DV camera for a day you can do messing around with that too for hours on end if neccessary, without having to worry about how much footage you’re taking, which is obviously an advantage. Classes are probably useful, but the best experience is just getting out there and doing it.
While everyone’s here, one think I could use advice on is the best way to find local film festivals (I’m in the UK) - is there any internet site that complies these sort of things? I found it quite hard to find anywhere that would take an hour long amateur.
Wendell Wagner I know personally I kept costs down, well, primarily by shooting in DV and hiring rather than buying all our equipment. Apart from that crew were all volunteers, all the locations were free apart from one, and we did editing and post production ourselves digitally, so that was practically free too. I’m not gonna say it was the best film ever, but it certainly had scope (medieval villages, castles, horses, a rain rig, etc.) so if you’ve got the talent I’m sure you could make an amazing movie for a similar cost.
Here are the google results for ‘uk’ and ‘film festival’. 664,000 results. Should be something in there for you somewhere.
I’m of two minds when it comes to DV vs. film. DV is very accessible. Lots of people have DV cameras (or hi-8, or whatever), and tapes are cheap. This does indeed allow you to shoot ‘hours on end’ without having to worry about the cost of all of that footage. Being inexpensive, it provides for more experimentation.
On the other hand, film is expensive. It forces the filmmaker to think about his shots before he pushes the button. I think that shooting on film helps to instill discipline and visualisation skills. Shooting on film (and paying for it) will, I think, prepare the aspiring filmmaker better for shooting on a shoestring budget.
I took a couple of classes. They were jokes. Basically, we received some information about exposure, were shown edited versions of Hollywood films, and then told to make a film for the class. (It was the first time the college had offered a film course, so it was a bit… rough.) Robert Rodriguez wrote that film classes will not teach you how to tell a story. That’s true, I think. They do teach (at least the ones I’ve attended) about exposures, lighting technique… the technical aspects; but I’ve gained more experience just working on films. Rodriguez says that film schools give you the technical information you need to make a film (but not the story-telling aspect) so that you can get a job in Hollywood toting someone else’s cables. Whatever. I’m glad I took the classes, cheap as they were. I can learn exposure and lighting with a 35mm SLR still camera, but it was fun making my little super-8 film and showing it to the class. Speaking of which…
I was disappointed in the film I made for the class. The dialog sucked, so I replaced it with music. (This was back when you could get super-8 sound film. The music was from the Dawn of the Dead soundtrack by Goblin.) I felt that I didn’t get the point across as well I should/could have. But the audience liked it. I intercut some stock footage (actually, copies of dad’s regular-8 films he shot in the Navy) so that I had jets and missiles and stuff without having to pay for it. The class liked the editing. The story is this: In a time of war, two people meet in the desert. After a gunfight, the victor realises her adversary was not an enemy. Mistaken identity.
Accident #1: By eliminating the dialog, the ending is ambiguous. Is the dead man the victor’s husband? A friend? Just someone who turns out to be on the same side, and whom she killed mistakenly? An ambiguous ending was not the way it was written. It just happened because I was displeased with the dialog.
Accident #2: It happened to be springtime, and the poppies were blooming. (The Antelope Valley, at the western edge of the Mojave Desert in the very north of L.A. County is renowned for its annual poppy explosion.) The class thought it was quite ingenious of me to portray such violence taking place in a field of pretty poppies. Ha! It was an accident of the season! But I’ve kept it in mind for future reference.
Accident #3, on another project: A man is being chased by a black, video-screen-faced, seven-foot robot. He runs into a room. The robot crashes through the door and catches him. The actor playing the robot couldn’t see, since there were no eye holes. The ‘face’ was an LCD screen. He also couldn’t hear anything, due to the heavily insulated helmet. We removed the hinges from the door. The director told the robot to wait one second after he called ‘action’ before he broke down the door. I was in the room focused on the actor, who was leaning against the door. The robot-actor didn’t hear the bit about waiting one second. At ‘Action!’ the actor turned away from the door, and the robot immediately crashed through. The door bonked the actor on the head. It all looked very realistic – which it was! 
Great shot. The lump on the actor’s head didn’t show very much in the next shot. 
So clayton_e: Be aware of accidents! An unexpected decision to change the audio, the coincidence of location, and even shots that go wrong can turn out for the better. (Not that I’m advising injuring actors – though I did want to get another take of the door-crashing. )
And I agree with Lucius that you don’t have to be concerned about script format if you’re shooting for yourself.
Anyway, don’t worry about making The Great Film of 2005. Just get a camera – any camera – and shoot some stuff. You’ll have fun, and it will be very instructive.
I’m not sure I can add too many tips to those already posted, but here goes.
Like I said earlier, when we tallied up all of our expenses, it came to about $4,100. The vast majority of that money was food and booze for the cast. Here’s my Big Tip #1: if you’re not going to pay people, make sure they’re well-fed and have a good time on the set. We shot on Mini-DV which is the way to go if you’re penniless. It was 79 minutes long, edited down from a whopping 31 hours of footage plus Flash animation.
I came up with the concept for the movie and got word to an old friend of mine who is a documentary filmmaker that I wanted him to DP it; since it was a mockumentary, I thought getting a documentary filmmaker to film it would help the believability, and it did. (After our second film festival showing, I happened onto a Live Journal thread where some audience members were debating whether or not it was real! I think that means we succeeded.) He also volunteered to help edit the movie on his Mac G5 (Final Cut Pro is the way to go!). It took 11 months from “Hey, let’s make a movie!” to completion. About month 8, I was convinced we weren’t going to make it. Making movies on a shoestring is often fun and ultimately rewarding, but it ain’t easy! The main actors and crew worked on a deferrment. Three producers (including myself) paid for the whole thing out of our pockets. We borrowed equipment, most of which was payback for time I’d put into other people’s movies or various other bartered arrangements. We paid for several locations, including Sun Studios in Memphis, which turned out to be quite the coup. Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash biopic was filming at the same time we were, and their accountant told us they had tried to get Sun and failed, so they had to actually rebuild it on a soundstage. Our biggest shoot had forty or fifty extras and cost about $1,000-about a quarter of the budget. 275 beers were consumed that night, and the next day my SO and I bagged all of those cans up and mopped the floor. (Please note that the director finally got a beer about 1:30 AM!) “I’ll bet Coppela doesn’t mop the damned floor!” I screamed at one point.
If you’re not going to be able to pay people, you have to be very flexible with your scheduling. These people are doing you a huge favor, so be nice to them! But you have to be cold-blooded, too. I fired a friend of mine and gave his part to someone else (who turned in one of the best performances in the movie, I might add) when he didn’t show up for a rehearsal. My most valuable lesson as a director was probably something akin to the old military axiom “Amateurs talk strategy–professionals talk logistics.” Logistics–having everybody in the right place for the right amount of time with the right equipment–is 66% of the battle. One thing you can do in the script phase is to help minimize the logistical problems is to minimize the number of settings you’re going to have. As others have said, write freely for the first draft and then on the second draft see if you can consolidate some settings–does this REALLY have to occurr in a parking lot, or can it happen at the protagonist’s house like all of the other scenes?
Anyway, it was great fun, very rewarding, and we’re currently gearing up for our next project.
Oh, and one more thing: Doper jackalope is a fantastic actor. He did a bang-up job and never fails to get good comments when we show the movie.
IMO, there should never be drugs or alcohol on the set. Some people may disagree, saying that performances are more realistic if the subject matter involves drugs or alcohol; but I think they cause problems.
We shot a music video in a bar in January. The director recruited some of the people in the bar (which was open, and doing business) and bought them beer to drink. That turned out okay, since all they had to do was sit there and ‘act’ drunk. I guess I may have done the same thing in the same situation.
But we shot some of a short video last week. Two people were in a hotel room drinking wine. The writer/actor/producer used real wine. He was nervous, since the scene involved kissing and he hasn’t kissed anyone else but his wife since they were married. He’s a big guy, so the wine only loosened him up a little. But the actress was all of 8 stone, and she just got silly. A lot of time was wasted because of her antics, and those of another person on the set who is just a natural time-waster.
I worked on another film once where one of the writers said he ‘had to’ smoke weed in order to function. He said he was too hyper otherwise. It’s no good having a high person on a set. (Not to mention that marijuana is illegal and we could have gotten into trouble.)
But let’s forget about the drugs. A lot of people like alcohol, and some directors don’t see a problem if people have some beer or wine during production. IMO it’s too risky. A person might have a little too much and be injured. They may get silly and waste valuable time and film. Save the sauce for the wrap party.
Absolutely! People have to be fed. On a paid shoot, craft service is virtually mandatory. On an unpaid one, it lets people know you care about them. Always provide food for actors and crew!
Sandwiches are good. A hot meal is even better. Maybe you have a wife or a mother who can cook. (I’m a good cook, but I’d rather focus on other things; else I’d make some stuff.) Pizza is good if you don’t have it too often. I was gripping one small production, and the director provided Koo-Koo-Roo Chicken. Another shoot offered Boston Market. Be aware of food restrictions. A lot of people are vegetarians, and they need to be fed too. On one shoot, the caterer made some excellent curries. Unfortunately, the director becomes violently and spectacularly ill if he eats curry. He made himself a ham sandwich.
Be sure to have plenty of bottled water for everyone. Sodas can be good, as can hot coffee; but make sure you have the water. Cookies, crisps, vegetables, and other snackies should be available. Coffee and doughnuts are a good way to start the shooting day. (Man, did I get sick of doughnuts on one shoot!)
But food costs money. This is one of the reasons Rodriguez shot El Mariachi ‘by himself’. The larger the cast and crew, the more money you have to spend on feeding them.
You don’t have to hire a catering truck, and you don’t have to send a PA out for some expensive restaurant take-out. But be sure to provide at least one ‘real meal’ a day, and be sure to have water and snacks on hand. It really helps.
I’d like your assistance in this thread, actually, anyone.
So… ever start a movie production company? I’m being leaned on by a friend for cash. It’s no great surprise, I’m sure, but the odds are I’ll lose every penny, right?
You’re probably right about the potential problems with drinking on the set, JohnnyLA, but we really didn’t have any problems. One extra got a little tanked at the Big Shoot, but it wasn’t any big deal. We made sure her friends got her home OK. We were a small, intimate group and everyone knew each other, which is probably why we could get away with it. I could definitely see larger, less familiar groups having trouble if it got out of hand.
And I have been forbidden from acting while under the influence of cannnibas. Screen acting requires fine control of your facial muscles, and apparently when I induge in the wacky tobaccy I lose some degree of expressiveness in my eyes.
My SO, one of our producers, is an excellent cook, and she has kept the cast and crew of three movie well-fed and happy. And she can do it for cheap.
I saw Dexter Murphy’s Expiration Date on eBay. Says it was made for under $4,100. Thought it might be you, but it doesn’t look like a mockumentary.